


Asterion

by papajackfoggy



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Antipaladins, Apologies to Liam, Asmodeus (D&D), At least the first chapter is, C2E84, Cursed swords, Dark Fantasy, Deal with a Devil, Dialogue Heavy, F/M, Fudging of 5e rules, Gothic Horror Elements, Not Beta Read, Self-Loathing Caleb Widogast, Slow Burn, That's right lads, Vampires, Very sorry for any typos, we're going full Elric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:13:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21699814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papajackfoggy/pseuds/papajackfoggy
Summary: An ultimatum from the Dynasty sends the Nein to a cold, dying town at the northernmost reaches of the Empire in hopes of prying a beacon away from the hands of the Cerberus Assembly. A dangerous prospect in and of itself, but doubly so for Caleb, who finds himself far closer to the shadows of his past than even he expected.
Relationships: Astrid/Bren Aldric Ermendrud, Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 19
Kudos: 47





	1. Conversations on the Northern Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the road north from Zadash, Caleb wrestles with questions of dreams, gods, forgiveness, and love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so this is basically 14k words of, well, something. It's mostly conversations between the Nein (hence the title of the chapter) because this is my first CR fic and I'm trying to figure out how to "get into" the characters' voices. I'm not sure if I've really mastered any of them, but I'll leave the judging up to you, the readers. Any chapters after this will probably be much more like serialized fiction with less dialogue, and future chapters probably won't be as long as this one.
> 
> The timeline is a little wonky here. It technically takes place after the HFB adventure but diverges at some point before the Caedogeist attacks the party at The Invulnerable Vagrant. So, yeah, no Caedogeist, no Cathedral, no freeing Yasha and killing Obann. Some of the character stuff that happens in later episodes will still be acknowledged, but pretty much everything halfway through E84 and beyond is an alternate reality to this fic.

“My God is a God of ironies.”

\- Have a Nice Life,  
_Dracula Bells  
_

_\--  
  
_

_ Nulla. The Devil in the House of Daedalus   
  
  
_

The labyrinth had raged into an inferno when Asmodeus found the Minotaur shivering at its center and offered an hour of fate for an eternity of service:

“Damnation for salvation,” said the devil in his silky way, “such is the cost for cheating destiny. And thou’rt already damned, so why not serve?”

The Minotaur kneeled before the Black God and was made man once more.  
  


\--

_ I. On Odysseus, Circe, and her Sea-Cursed Sister _

That night he dreamed of the bull.

He dreamed of its black eyes, so often docile, oblivious with rage. He dreamed of the paroxysm and the charge. He dreamed of the goring, and the electric thrum of pain, and the abyss that swallowed him whole.

And then he awoke. Not paralyzed in a straw bed, but sore in a skittering little cart surrounded by warm bodies.

“Bad dreams, Mister Caleb?” Caduceus asked from the front of the cart, warmth and understanding in his basso intonation, made warmer by the grey morning mist and the arrhythmic pitter-patter of frigid rain tossed to-and-fro by a biting northerly wind.

Caleb Widogast squeezed his eyes shut for a few seconds in a vain attempt to shake the sleep from them, and then took stock of the cart they rode in. Nott snored loudly, curled up against his side; Jester and Beau still dreamed in their corner of the cart; only he, Caduceus, and Fjord seemed to be awake this early in the morning, and the half-orc, too, eyed the wizard with something akin to concern.

“Yeah,” agreed Caleb, knowing the word came out clipped in his harsh Zemnian accent, “bad dream, something like that.”

He felt yellow eyes upon him; Fjord, too, was no stranger to bad dreams. For a moment it looked like the warlock wanted to ask him about it, but then he seemed to think better of it.

 _A good thing, too,_ thought Caleb. Fjord’s dreams were the sibilant writhings of a chained god and the freedom offered by nature incarnate; his were only the piteous, gasping ghosts of a cursed childhood, rising every so often to torment his haunted mind. They were nothing alike.

“How far?” Caleb asked, hoping to distract his two friends before their concern won out over their caution. It worked:

“Well,” said Caduceus serenely, “can’t much tell with all the mist right now, but I figure since we’re getting in the muck now—” he made a gesture to the trail of muddy slop the road had become, “—we can’t be far off. Less than 10 miles.”

"Maybe half-a-day then, should we manage not to get the wheels stuck," Fjord estimated.

They were wandering again, like in the days when they’d first met: The Angel of Irons cult, headed by the nine-lived Obann, had gone suspiciously quiet in the weeks the Nein had spent within the Folding Halls, and all of Jester’s attempts to consult the Traveler and scry had failed. Caleb had been the first to suggest the dreadful hypothesis: that Obann had somehow managed to find an artifact like the necklace he himself wore. In the proceeding days, his theory seemed likelier and likelier. It slowly spread disquiet among the group; The Laughing Hand was now mortal, and they had a sliver of hope that they could save Yasha because of it, but it was all for nothing if they could not get a bead on Obann and his group.

“Essek better be right about this one,” grumbled a shivering Fjord, drawing the cape he wore tighter over his body, “dragging us out to the arse-end of the Empire because someone heard that someone else heard an _orb_ was seen in a _fishing village_.”

“Well, there aren’t a lot of _orbs_ out there, right?” Caduceus reasoned, giving their Xhorhassian patron the benefit of the doubt. “One of them could very well be our beacon.”

“Yeah, but we’re not looking for an orb, are we? We’re looking for a dodecahedron, aren’t we?” Fjord asked, prompting only a shrug from Caduceus:

“Orbs, dodecahedrons… I think that’s kind of a meaningless distinction, don’t you?” 

“Er… not really. It could be a very meaningful distinction, in fact, ‘Duceus,” Fjord said.

“Oh,” said Caduceus simply, bringing a hand up under his chin and mulling over it for a while. “Maybe,” he eventually said with his usual goofy smile.

Caleb cleared his throat while withdrawing into his coat like a turtle retreating into its shell, simultaneously seeking and shrinking from attention. “Essek’s intelligence is usually trustworthy; he has not led us astray before. I will concede Durenwald is a strange locale for something like the beacon, but the Assembly is nothing if not unpredictable.”

The three fell into a grim silence. Durenwald was an old fishing hamlet with a black reputation, one steeped in madness, heresy, and blood sacrifice. And if rumors on the road up north were to be believed, it had only swelled in size with refugees from the battered little villages of the Empire, funneling in on the off chance of catching a repurposed fishing vessel out west toward Tal’Dorei, and hopefully far away from conflicts between Empire and Dynasty. Even without the prospect of the dread sorceries and malign experiments of the Assembly or the profane rites of the townsfolk, the Nein would have to be on guard; in Caleb’s experience, an overcrowded town stuffed with desperate people was a powder keg waiting to go off.

“Too many people,” Fjord said, “too much can go wrong. And if we fuck it up—”

 _If we fuck it up, there will be an attack on this town, and it will be a massacre_. The fact that they were even here was an enormous show of faith from Essek, who had managed to hold off a large-scale invasion on the off chance that this little band of operators could recover the beacon without mass bloodshed.

Caleb ran hand through his hair, black now, with wings of grey at the temples. Jester’s handiwork, a nonmagical way to disguise him from his wizard brethren now that they were walking into the belly of the beast. The Zemnian sincerely doubted hastily applied dye would fool anyone, let alone the wolves he used to run with, but the little blue tiefling had been very convincing in her exuberance, if not necessarily her logic. According to her, he looked distinguished; Caleb disagreed. The look worked on Fjord, but he had needed only one quick glance in a mirror to dismiss himself as a shabby, underfed man fast approaching middle age. Then again, he _was_ a shabby, underfed man fast approaching middle age, so perhaps it did suit him. Nevertheless, he hoped the dye would come out as soon as they were finished with this dreadful business.

“Fjord is that _fear_ I hear?” said another voice, high and shrill, indicating Nott had stirred from slumber. “It’s only a bunch of cultists, people with nothing left to lose, and possibly Caleb’s psycho old friends. I know you’re a coward and all, but _really_ , it’s nothing to be afraid of,” she nodded with all the air of a woman trying to convince herself of her own bravery more than insult Fjord.

“Widogast, you got a spell to put the rat back to sleep? Morning’s too nice for all the screeching,” the half-orc asked, feigning vicious sincerity and thus drawing Nott’s ire.

“Right,” said Caleb, interrupting Nott just as she made to say something very rude and very loud. “Very nice morning. With the fog, and the rain, and the wind.”

Caduceus gave a low chuckle from behind a curtain of pale pink. “All mornings are nice in their own way, Caleb. If you ask me, I think today’s rather cozy.”

“And I’m quite certain that even a morning spent in the nine hells would be too nice for _it_ ,” Fjord said while pointing at Nott, which only served to further raise the goblin’s hackles. Yet another outburst was only narrowly avoided by Caleb clamping a blackened hand over Nott’s toothy maw:

“ _Bloody hell_ ,” he cursed lowly in Zemnian, “you are too easily riled, Nott!” The goblin, muffled by Caleb’s hand, murmured something involving a rusty knife and Fjord’s cock, though she had gone limp in Caleb’s arms, suggesting the threat of castration was only half-hearted at best.

Having played his part in pacifying Nott, Caleb now waited for Caduceus to put on his gentle frown and calmly rebuke Fjord:

“Can you stop goading her?” he entreated, and then pointed over to tangled mess of limbs that was Beau and Jester. “We’ve still got a few asleep.”

Fjord only looked mildly cowed. “Fine, fine. I’ll leave her alone. _For now_ ,” he said, but there was a hint of a smile in his tone, and there was a subtle curvature to the way Nott squinted at him afterward that indicated she too was amused.

Half-an-hour of quiet before breakfast was quickly agreed upon, as everyone assembled knew the moment Beau and, particularly, Jester awoke, any form of peace or tranquility was to be trampled upon in a thousand different ways. So, the quiet light of the morning took shape: Fjord obsessively cleaned and recleaned the Star Razor, Nott tinkered with her crossbow bolts as quietly as she could, Caduceus had a hushed and heartfelt conversation with the horses as he led them through the rain, and Caleb settled back with a fascinating tome on the history of extinct Zydellian Empire, the would-be god-killers that spawned his culture. He was only at the beginning, of course, when Zydellian history was littered with legendary heroes, long before their heretical turn.

So engrossed was he in the reading and the valiant exploits of the Knights of Zydell that he barely took notice of the blue that encroached his personal space and began to block his view of the book. First there was the clever knightess who, with a band of companions not unlike the one Caleb traveled with, slew a curse-weaving demon queen that heralded the abyss, then there was indigo hair, and then curlicued horns, and then mischievous lilac eyes surrounded by a constellation of freckles. He blinked.

“ _Caleb_ ,” Jester sang in her lilting accent that somehow added three syllables to his name, an impish grin splayed across her lips, “what are you reading?”

Though he should have been used by now to Jester’s definition, or lack thereof, of ‘personal space,’ Caleb instinctively jerked backward and banged his head against one of the low walls of the cart, which drew an unmanly yelp from him. Jester brought a cerulean fist to her mouth and bit on a curled knuckle to prevent from snickering at the resident wizard’s usual lack of coordination.

Rubbing the back of his head, Caleb speared her with a baleful glare. “ _Good morning_ to you as well. This is a… a history of my people. Ah… well, at least the people who were, er, ancestors of my people,” he said lamely.

_Wonderful, dummkopf, she was learning her letters and numbers when you were learning to kill and yet you are the one stammering like a schoolboy._

“Zemnians, you mean?” Jester asked, still much too close for Caleb’s liking.

“Close enough. Why so interested?” Caleb asked, eyes narrowing. Jester never took interest in what he was reading, unless it involved smut of some kind.

“What? Can’t I be _curious_? I like reading _too_ , you know,” the little tiefling admonished, though not very convincingly to Caleb’s mind, and then with a grossly affected swoon, she asked: “Soooo, is it… _romantic_?”

“Histories are not usually known for their torrid romances, Jester,” said Caleb flatly, if she wanted a bit of dime store erotica to read, she would have to look elsewhere.

Jester, of course, disagreed. “Technically, _technically_ they are. History is one big romance, Cay-leb; it’s all sex and, like, big dicks—” she splayed her arms out to show just how big the dicks in question were, eyes sparkling with mirth, “—when you _really think_ about it! Else how would you and I, or anyone else, be here?”

“Fear, selfishness, and obligation, generally,” he returned, and allowed himself a small grin at the confusion that bloomed across her lovely features.

Belatedly, Caleb realized the cart was stopped, and empty as well. He took a look outside while Jester searched for a riposte to his latent antinatalist tendencies and found Beau and Fjord training hard even in the misty cold some thirty feet away from the horses, the monk prodding the half-orc’s side with a toe as he struggled through a set of one-handed push-ups. Closer, on the other side of the horses, sat both Nott and Caduceus, mulling over a bubbling pot of stew that smelled of the exotic spices the firbolg had picked up in their last outing to Zadash, before they began their trek up north.

Ah, so that was why she had deigned to inflict him upon herself. Recently, Jester had made a habit of joining whichever member of the Nein was off on their own, apparently to make sure they didn’t get lonely, which was equal parts endearing and frustrating, since he most often became the recipient of her affections.

“You know,” said Jester, now curling up to his side as if she were Nott and reading over the exploits of the demon-slaying knight and her companions. “I don’t ever see you reading about wizards.”

Their new position was not close enough to be considered scandalous, yet Caleb froze, unable to move as taut muscle settled against his own skin and bone. Privately, he always found himself amazed at how much strength was packed into the tiefling’s dancer-like figure. He had spent many years locked in away in a small room, not entirely dissimilar to the way she had spent much of her childhood, and he had only wasted away. Then again, she was chosen by a _god_ of some sort; perhaps disuse and infirmity did not siege at those born under a divine sign as they did to the wretched.

“—aleb? Caaaleb?” she was looking up at him, waving her hand in front of his face. “ _Oh_ , good! You looked a little bit lost for a second there.”

“Yes. Sorry. I did not realize we stopped. What were you asking?”

Jester frowned and bit her lower lip, something she did when she was nervous or looking for the right words to say. “It’s just… all the books I see you reading, even the smutty ones—you have _very good_ taste, by the way—are about _big, strapping_ knights with their _big, strapping_ swords—” Caleb wasn’t entirely sure she meant swords of the metal variety, “—I’m just surprised. Do you not _like_ being a wizard?”

“Er… what?” he asked with mild bemusement. “I read plenty of books about wizards.”

“No,” Jester said, lower now but still with some of her telltale bullishness, “you read books written _by_ wizards. _Nonfiction_ books, _spell_ books! Those don’t count. I just thought you would like to read about heroes, well, more like _you_. I was just wondering if maybe, _maybe_ , you—”

“ _Ja_ , I understand what you mean. It is… something of a leap of, er, logic to suggest that I, ah, do not enjoy my vocation, though. You know this, right?”

“Is it?” she asked, challenging, searching for something in his gaze. Caleb sensed a phantom itch running up his ruined arms, nerves screaming for him run and hide, as he always felt whenever Jester, or Beau, or Caduceus suddenly got too perceptive for their own good. Perhaps that’s why he was more comfortable around Fjord and Nott: they were deceivers like him, interested more in hiding the core truths of who they really were than uncovering the truths of others.

 _Wolves are most comfortable in each other’s company, so too are liars and thieves_ , a voice that sounded much like Trent Ikithon echoed through his sleep-starved brain, and Caleb forced himself away from his master’s cold words, forced himself not to think of burning houses, or dead men with broken teeth and missing fingers.

 _But they have come clean, and you are still a wolf._ This time, the rebuke was his own.

“It is,” he said with some effort. “And it is not for lack of trying, if you are wondering. I have looked. Amoral archmages, prideful liches, trickster viziers, cannibal witches… oh, sure, there are one or two, but it appears the publishing world has decided wizards make better villains than heroes.”

Jester suddenly frowned, as though recalling all of the stories she had accumulated through the years, searching high and low for any tales centering around a truly heroic mage. The seconds labored on into half-a-minute, and Caleb could tell she grew increasingly agitated with the fact that she could not relate even one, evidenced by the fact that she nearly cuffed him with her horn, the result of a particularly frustrated shake of her head. Caleb smiled sadly, shut the book he had been reading, and made to stand, extricating himself from the innocently intimate position they’d shared:

“For what it’s worth, personal experience has taught me they are most likely correct.”

He stepped off the cart and made for bubbling pot around which Caduceus and Nott sat, leaving the horses and an uncharacteristically melancholy Jester behind. 

\--

_ II. On the Great Lord Odin, Slain by Fenrir and Nietzsche’s Modern Fear  
  
_

Breakfast was served, and they hit the road once more.

Fjord had been next on jockeying duty, but Beau had run him especially ragged during their morning routine, enough to keep him off his feet for a few hours at least. The half-orc now laid in the back of the cart, bearing the brunt of both Beau’s incessant mockery and Jester’s incessant fussing. That meant leading the cart fell to Caleb for the rest of the morning, and he bore the brunt of Nott’s incessant chatter. He loved their ‘little goblin girl’ dearly, but he could not pretend to be interested in her kvetching about the weather, about the muddy road, about the jagged pebbles that kept getting caught in her boots, and so on. One glance back informed the conscripted driver that Fjord, too, was ignoring everything Jester nattered on about. Their eyes met, ghostly blue on ghostly yellow, and they exchanged weak, suffering smiles.

Caleb had never felt so close to the warlock as he did in that moment.

The rain had picked up again, and so too did that chilling wind that sung through the dead trees and filled the wizard with a sense of wrenching nostalgia. He thought of the cold mornings by the fire where his mother regaled him with stories of the _other_ Wildemount—the mythic land of friars and gypsies, of knights on mystical quests, of faeries and dryads in deep, mottled woods—that existed only in the starry-eyed fugue of childhood memory. And he thought of his father, too: the big man, the muzhik with a royal name, who once carried his little boy on his shoulders to the frozen lake outside Blumenthal just to show him the ice.

It was almost enough to soothe the frayed ends of his heart, until he remembered that he had repaid his father by showing him fire.

_You are still a wolf._

And was he not? Brandishing his excuses to Nott, accusing Halas of the very same crimes he intended to commit, standing idly by as a man condemned to eternal imprisonment was shattered to dust. Hypocrisy was his winter coat, secrets his claws, lies his fangs.

 _Not a wolf, perhaps,_ said another voice, darker, silkier, _perhaps a bull?_

Caleb retreated into the collar of his coat, guarding himself from the bitter, whistling wind, and listened once more to Nott, suddenly in the mood to hear all about her laundry list of minor inconveniences.

“—I just don’t know how it keeps happening!” Nott was saying in her endearingly shrill manner. “I’ve tried everything, tucking my trousers into my boots, wearing them over my boots, hell I’ve even used rope to tie—” She stopped in her tracks, which drew the full attention of both Caleb and Caduceus, who had been meditating just behind them. Nott sniffed the air, once, twice, and then frowned.

“What is it?” Caduceus asked.

“You don’t smell that?”

“Smell wha—” Caleb started, and then it hit him. The wind had changed direction, and with it came the sickly-sweet scent of _rot_. Rot like the cells beneath Master Ikithon’s manor, rot like that pretty half-elf’s legs two days after he and Eodwulf had helped shatter her knees. _A traitor to the Empire, a traitor to the Empire, she was a traitor, she was, she had to be, just like father and mother, not a traitor at all_ …

“That fucking reeks,” Beau had crossed the distance of the wagon’s interior and now perched next to Caleb, affecting nonchalance but he could hear a slight waver in her voice.

Caduceus seemed unaffected, but said, “Yeah. Smells like death, alright.”

There was a lurch in the cart as Fjord stood up against Jester’s protest, summoning the Star Razor to his hand, and Beau was the first to rise, holding a palm out toward his chest. “Hold it big man, you aren’t going anywhere, not like that. I’ll go on ahead to check.”

“I assure you that I’m fine,” the half-orc’s reply was measured and it dipped ever-so-slightly back into Vandren’s accent, “and it is _not_ a smart idea for you to go ranging out alone, not when we’re this close.”

“I’ll take Nott with me, or Caleb; the horses are skittish around fire anyway,” Beau said with a wary eye toward Caleb, no doubt thinking of his predilection for pyromancies, “you protect the cart. Make sure nothing’s _watching the ship_ , Captain.”

“Beau,” said Jester, without her normal whimsy, “maybe you _should_ take Fjord.” Her tail whipped nervously behind her, and she glanced once or twice at the wizard. He could practically hear the unspoken _Caleb is squishy_.

“Maybe I shouldn’t. Get up Widogast. You too, Nott.”

Caleb knew better than to railroad Beau when she built up a head of steam, so he relinquished the reins to Caduceus, who was looking between him and Beau thoughtfully, and then followed the monk as she hopped off the cart. They both landed into the soup the road had become, splattering mud up onto their trousers, the side of the cart, and the horses. It was a miracle the cart hadn’t gotten stuck in the muck yet. Turning around, Caleb helped Nott slip off the cart and set her down next to him. When he looked up, he found Beau had already gone off ten paces ahead of them, and he had to jog to catch up:

“The horses?” he asked, skeptical. They both knew very well he could have just sent Frumpkin up ahead to scout, so there must have been a reason for Beau’s sudden bout of wanderlust with Nott and himself.

“I had to think of something,” Beau returned gruffly, stepping off the road and heading into the forest canopy for cover, “you were starting to get that look in your eye. All haunted.”

They followed; Caleb tried not to fidget or scratch his arms. He succeeded, but only by scratching at his newly salt-and-mostly-peppered beard. A failure, then, but Caleb didn’t mind. He was intimately familiar with failure; it was an old friend, of sorts.

Nott caught on to Beau’s train of thought quickly, but her eyebrows still scrunched in confusion. “So, your idea was to bring him _closer_ to whatever this is?”

Beau answered Nott but addressed Caleb, hard blue eyes softening just a touch. “Better you freak out with me and Nott than with the others. You don’t have to hide anything from us.”

She was right, they were privy to Caleb’s sordid, gory past; he had no secrets of note to hide from them, so he could be himself in a way he couldn’t around the others. Something like gratitude bubbled up in his chest, mixed with a familial rush of affection for Beau. Below, Nott gave him an empathetic look and extended a little green hand for him to grasp.

He took it. “Thank you, you two,” he said quietly.

“Don’t mention it,” Beau said. “Just remember that you won’t be able to hide it from them forever.”

Caleb nodded, and they moved on together as one. The silence only lasted a few moments before it was broken by Nott, who sniffed the air once more:

“Still a bit to go, I’d wager,” she said.

Beau nodded, took three steps, and then grunted. “Fuck.”

“What?” Nott asked, stopping short.

“I don’t even know anymore,” Beau started. “If it isn’t the war, it’s this fucking Tharizdun. Like, seriously what the fuck. Who _the shit_ actually even _worships_ a thing like that, a thing that just wants to destroy everything?”

Nott shrugged from below. “Does any of this actually _surprise_ either of you? Some evil, demon-spawning abyss god wanting to vore the world tracks with all the batshit stuff we’ve already seen." 

Beau was silent for a moment, short ponytail bobbing up and down with every step, before she conceded. “Yeah, I guess it really isn’t that surprising, honestly. But still, we’re talking about, like, universe-ending shit.”

"Tell me about it," the goblin exhaled a twitchy sigh and took a swig of whisky from her flask.

“What?” Caleb asked, amused. “You two do not see the appeal?”

“In what?” Nott squeaked. “Endless nothing?”

“Of-goddamned-course I don’t see the appeal in that,” said Beau, barely sparing him a glance over her shoulder.

“Yeah I’m gonna be honest, that sounds _super_ terrible.”

The wizard scoffed. “The world is already endless nothing, only now there would be no more suffering.”

Now the monk did turn to face him. “Yeah, only because everything’s already dead, dickhead. And can you _stop_ that tortured nihilist bullshit, by the way? It’s fucking annoying and no one's buying it.”

“I am Zemnian. We invented nihilism. It is our national character.”

“Yeah, right alongside conquest and general assholery.”

“Yes, favored pastimes, both, second only to parricide,” said Caleb dryly, though the quip turned to ash in his mouth.

“ _Wow_ ,” Nott said, wincing.

“Damn. That’s pretty dark, even for you,” Beau remarked.

 _You really are a monster, laughing at your own cruelty,_ Ikithon said in the back of Caleb’s brain with a thin, reedy laugh, _maybe I didn’t fail you entirely._

The wizard affixed a fake smile to his lips. “One must learn to laugh at their failures.”

An awkward silence descended upon the three; neither Beau nor Nott seemed to know how to continue the conversation and neither seemed especially keen on being the one to break the stillness. Rather ironically, it ended up suiting them well as they came closer to the origin of the rot. Thirty seconds passed, then a minute, and then Nott suddenly squeezed Caleb’s hand with as much power as she could muster:

“Hold it,” she whispered, instinctively crouching low, dragging Caleb to do the same via their entwined hands.

Beau mimicked the duo. “What’s up?”

“Up ahead. There’s people in the trees.”

“I don’t see anything,” Beau said. Neither did Caleb.

“That’s because all you humans have shitty eyesight,” scoffed the rogue. “Let’s get a little closer and I’ll show you.”

They were coming to a break in the forest, to a glade bisected by a spluttering little stream. To their left, along the road which they’d been traveling, a questionably constructed bridge spanned over the waterflow and continued to the other side of the glen, back into the heart of the forest and the fog beyond.

“There, right at the edge. Do you see them?” Nott asked, pointing in the direction where the road disappeared.

Caleb squinted his eyes to see up ahead, his eyesight wasn’t as good as Nott’s and the fog seemed almost supernatural in its thickness, but with time and luck he eventually spotted them. One, then two, then four, then a whole host all floating in the air along the treeline some hundred feet ahead. They swayed a little bit, to and fro, but otherwise remained still and aloft, reminding the wizard rather suddenly of the way Essek moved.

“Hanging,” Beau said succinctly. “There’s gotta be… what? Twenty? Thirty?”

“Twenty-three, by my counting, though I may be missing some. You have better eyes than I, Beauregard,” said Caleb, doing a quick count of those he could make out.

“Can’t make out shit beyond that there’s people, really,” Beau said. She lowered her darkvision goggles of her eyes, and immediately drew them back up clicking her tongue in annoyance.

Nott bravely took another nip of whisky. “I can check it out.”

“No. Too dangerous, reeks of a trap,” said the monk.

“Agreed. We need to be smart about this; I can send Frumpkin on ahead.”

“Do it,” said Beau, and to his other side Nott nodded encouragingly.

With a snap, a large, spotted feline sprang from the ether into the soft soil below Caleb. Frumpkin looked up at his wizard, cocked his head, and let out a questioning miaow. Caleb smiled and ran an affectionate hand over the head of his little lion, and he simply pointed across the glade to the timberline on the other side. The fey cat gave Caleb's sooty finger an affectionate nip before scurrying off, knowing what was required of him without any words needed.

Frumpkin had scampered across the miniature bridge over the brook and trotted into the fog by the trees when Caleb put a hand on Beau’s shoulder and stepped into the paws of his familiar, seeing with the cat’s eyes. The first thing he noted was the smell, far sharper to Frumpkin’s nose than it was to his own, but somehow more tolerable as well. The second thing he noted was that his estimate had indeed been conservative, there were likely over thirty men, women, and even children hanging from the branches in varying states of decay.

They were clustered on the trees nearest the road, an obvious warning sign to passersby. Caleb relayed this fact to Beau and Nott, though he could not hear their responses in Frumpkin’s body.

Caleb commanded his familiar forward and kept a sharp eye, but after a minute he still could not see, hear, or smell any other life in the area beyond some small woodland creatures in the distance a few carrion feeders that dropped every so often to pick a morsel of decaying meat from the dead. But he did spot a sign, crudely hammered into the forest floor, with Zemnian words painted on it in the color of blood. 

"Beware the Heretic's Wood," he said, but he could not hear the words.

He stared for some moments longer and committed the horrific tableau to memory, then with a shudder, he withdrew from Frumpkin, entreating the fey creature to return as his parting order. He rubbed his eyes, once again becoming used to his own sense of sight, and heard Beau repeating a brief version of what he had said. Upon opening his eyes, he saw Beau facing Nott, who was counting her words with her fingers.

 _Ah, that must be for Jester,_ he thought.

“We should probably go back,” Caleb said once Beau finished.

“Yeah, probably. Better all of us go across, if we’re on our guard, we can take on an ambush.”

Beau stood up and then offered Caleb a hand up, who did the same for Nott. Within a few seconds, Frumpkin returned, pouncing into Caleb’s arms and climbing up his shoulders, where he took his usual spot, wrapped as a living scarf around his wizard’s neck. The four of them moved quickly, retracing their steps back to the cart:

“Looks like your friends are cleaning house.”

“They are not my friends, Beauregard,” Caleb said stiffly.

“Right. That was shitty of me. Sorry.”

“It is forgotten. They did say heresy runs freely in Durenwald, and it is still a town of the Empire. It was only a matter of time before people started dying. Perhaps if we do our jobs right for once, they will be the only ones to die.”

“Are you ready for that, though?” Beau asked, with all the subtlety of a battering ram.

The wizard frowned. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

“It means—” 

“I think,” Nott interrupted, throwing Beau with a vicious glare, “what Beau’s trying to say is: it’s dangerous there. We might be closer to your old f—acquaintances than ever, and we haven’t got a lot of backup here…”

“One wrong move could get us all killed,” Beau continued, “or worse, you could end up back in _their_ hands.”

Again with the crystals. Again with the fire. Again with the knives. Again with the blood. Could he do it all again? Kill again? Maim again? _Again, again, again_ … No. He would not do it again. He'd cut his own throat or self-immolate if he had to. But he would _never_ do it again.

“Yes, I am well aware of the possibility,” Caleb said, more icily than he intended. “Were you plotting this intervention while I was scouting with Frumpkin?”

“No,” said Nott, flinching in a way that convinced Caleb his suspicions were correct.

“It’s not an intervention, man,” Beau said, sighing. “I just… we just want to make sure you’re okay. Make sure you’re ready. We’re walking straight into the fucking lion’s den, Caleb.”

Any combativeness fled from the wizard’s body, and he let out a weary sigh to match Beau’s. “No, I am not ready, but that does not matter. Some things you will be never ready for, however you must do them all the same.”

Neither Beau nor Nott pressed, both seemingly satisfied with the answer.

Presently, the cart came into view. Jester was pacing back and forth in front of it, caking her boots and the front of her fancy new cloak in mud; Fjord stood watch within the cart, looking as though he hadn’t moved an inch from when they’d left; Caduceus reclined in the driver’s seat, eyes closed, but only a fool would think him unaware.

Caleb picked up the pace. Jester was the first to see him and hustled over through the slick mud:

“Caaay-leb,” she started, sliding and slipping until at last she skated to him and used his shoulders to steady herself. “Is it true? Are there heretics in the woods?” Frumpkin lifted his head long enough to give Jester’s nearest thumb an experimental sniff and a couple of lazy licks along the knuckle.

“If by heretics, you mean their corpses, then yes, there are many,” he took a moment to study the curve of her chin and the rose quartz of her eyes as she frowned. “You will need to be careful. If you mention your Traveler in a place like this, you’re liable to hang with them.”

Beau, who had caught up by now, nodded over to Fjord and Caduceus. “That goes for you two, as well. From now on, anyone asks, you either aren’t religious or you’re a follower of The Lawbearer. Make sure they can’t find your symbols.”

“The Lawbearer,” mused Caduceus, no doubt thinking of the connection between the goddess of laws and his own goddess of nature. “Yeah, I can make that work for a little bit. Just for a little bit, though.”

“No religion works for me,” said Fjord, sheathing the Star Razor now that it seemed any immediate threat had passed.

“Either of you know how far out we are?”

Fjord shrugged. “Hard to say, looked at the map; but it’s hard to say for sure. Maybe five miles?”

“What about you, Caleb?” Jester asked lowly, ignoring the conversation between Beau and Fjord. She spoke with a hint of _something_ in her tone, but Caleb couldn’t tell quite what it was.

“What about me?” he asked, suddenly very aware that she hadn’t made to step back or release him.

“What god would _you_ pretend to follow?”

“I, er, figure no religion works for me as well.”

“That’s booooring. You should pick a god.”

“But I do not serve any gods.”

“Indulge me,” she wheedled now, “it’s just a _hypothetical_ , Caleb. What god _would_ you serve if you _could_? You don’t have to, like, _convert_ or anything.”

What god would he desire to serve?

_None, most likely._

How many terrible crimes could be laid at the feet of the gods both good and evil? How many deaths for their causes? How many sins and catastrophes that brought whole ages to end and civilizations to ruin, just to settle their petty squabbles and infighting? Sins that made his murderous pyrotechnics seem trivial in comparison? _All they bring is suffering, and they have the gall to judge us? How dare they? How dare they?_

A wild, irrational fury roiled in his gut. The Zydellians had the truth of it: they had judged the gods and found them wanting. They should have slain that curdled divinity. They should have hailed them with arrows of power, cut their throats with serrated blades, tore out their pitiless hearts, impaled them upon mystic pikes for the world to see that mortals were not tools of an old, unjust order.

_Thus began the Age of Man…_

Unbidden, Caleb’s skin crawled with the thought of groveling at the feet of an impassive god, the way Caduceus and Jester, and now Fjord as well, must have. Begging for the smallest scrap of the arcane, creatures so low they could not stand on their own two feet without the support of the greatest murderers in history.

For a moment, he saw Jester and was disgusted. But then she smiled, a charming and lovely thing, and he choked on his own acid.

“So?” she asked, disarming him like she always did.

His stuttering mind sagged with shame. How could he think of Jester as low or groveling? She was brilliant like the sun, brilliant enough to attract the attention of a god. She did not _beg_ ; she was _chosen_. _And you have the gall to judge her? You, the torturer; you, the murderer? How dare you? How dare you? What god would desire a servant such as you? All you bring is death._

“Caleb?” Jester broke his reverie with a squeeze of his shoulders; the bright smile was still on her lips, but there was a glint of concern in the way her eyes swept over his tall, thin frame.

A grim smirk played at the wizard’s lips: in his quiet rage he had committed blasphemy and projected his own sins onto the gods. Such hubris. Jester mistook self-loathing for good humor and did a little wiggling dance with her shoulders, still awaiting an answer. Caleb looked helplessly over at Nott, who gave him a motherly smile, or at least as motherly as the jagged mouth of her goblin form could manage. Seeing no help would come from the goblin, he looked for his next ally in Beau, who shrugged:

“If you wanna know about Ioun I can give you, like, the world’s shittiest summary,” she sounded typically devil-may-care, but her expression was anything but. First, she watched him, then her eyes flicked over to Jester and lingered with another bit of _something_ in her gaze.

“Well? Caleb?” asked Jester, drawing the wizard away from his observations.

“The Raven Queen,” Caleb said suddenly, though initially he wasn’t entirely sure why he said it. “I’d pick The Raven Queen.”

It should not have been surprising; he would later think. Death had long been a preoccupation of his from his first brush with it as a child, to those unbearably cold nights spent sleeping in ditches and contemplating suicide.

The tiefling bounced on her heels in the same way she did whenever she pulled off a properly tricky prank. “Ooooh, how _goth_! I _knew_ you would pick her. I even told Caduceus you would—didn’t I, Caduceus?”

“Huh? You say something, Miss Jessie?” the firbolg’s ears perked when his name was called.

“The Raven Queen! He picked her!”

“Oh, yeah. She called it, you know,” he said to Caleb.

“Did she?” Caleb asked, unsure if he should have been happy that his friends knew him so well, or if he should have been disappointed that he had become so predictable.

“Of course I did,” Jester scowled. “I know _everything_ that goes on in that fancy, fancy mind of yours. I bet I know what you’re thinking about _right now_.”

“ _Ja_? And what am I thinking about now?” he was amused and more than a little disbelieving, which was sure to aggravate Jester further.

Predictably, her scowl deepened. “You’re thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, Jester can read my stinky hobo wizard mind! She is so smart! And _beautiful_ , too!’”

“Yes, that sounds very much like me.”

“Really?” she asked with a quirked brow; clearly, she had not been expecting a positive response.

“ _Ja_ , I always refer to myself as a ‘stinky hobo wizard’ when internally monologuing.”

Jester responded by scrunching her nose and sticking her tongue out at him. It was a sight to behold. Suddenly half-mad with the fancy, Caleb pondered for a moment what it might be like to capture the offered appendage between his lips. Would she squeak in surprise? Or chuckle devilishly? He came to his senses almost immediately and cursed himself for slowly turning into a dirty old man.

“You two wanna quit flirting and get back on the cart? We’re wasting daylight,” Fjord interrupted, somehow becoming a momentary clairvoyant and detecting Caleb’s thoughts, however unknowingly. The wizard’s eyes remained on Jester, but he could almost _hear_ the warlock rolling his eyes.

“My, Fjord, are you _jea-lous_?” Jester gasped exaggeratedly, turning away to face the half-orc. Her fingers slipped from Caleb’s shoulder, but they only lowered so far as to take his hand in her one of her own.

Just like Fjord’s half-amused exasperation, Caleb could hear rather than see Jester’s eyebrows waggling mockingly. He did, however, see Fjord’s response, which was a silent, semi-irritated glare. With a great sigh, Fjord turned on heel and headed to the back of the covered wagon, just out of sight from Caleb’s position. The four standing on the trail shrugged at each other and made their way back to the cart.

“Caleb?” Jester asked just as they were about to climb back in; she hadn’t yet let go of his hand.

“Yes?”

“What do you call an idiot in Zemnian?”

“Oh, ah, there are many words for an idiot. _Dummkopf_ is probably closest. It is not an exact translation, but it is close enough,” Caleb said, letting go of Jester long enough to accept Beau’s proffered hand. She easily lifted him up.

“Ah,” she said, and was silent as he helped her climb up with a touch more effort required than Beau had needed. Once she was atop the cart she glanced over at Fjord, and Caleb thought she was going to use the newly-learned word on him, but instead she eyed the wizard carefully and said, “You know, I’ve heard you call yourself that before.”

“Have you?” They both quickly got to settling themselves, Caleb on the driver’s bench with Jester right behind him.

“ _Ja_ ,” she mimicked his accent terribly, “like, _a lot_.”

Caleb laughed, eyes on the road now. “Well, it is hardly inaccurate. I am, on occasion, quite an idiot in my own right.”

“Sometimes,” agreed Jester, and there was that unidentifiable _something_ in her timbre once more.

\--

_III. On Communion with the Cosmic Artists_   
  


The good cheer didn’t last very long; even Jester’s natural megawatt exuberance dimmed a touch as they came upon the Heretic’s Wood and trundled by the fruits of the Empire’s labor:

“Children, too…” she murmured while staring at one of them, a human boy no older than twelve, who might have been a handsome young lad in life but had turned blue and bloated in death.

“Yeah,” said Beau, nodding to no one in particular, “Empire’s not fucking around.”

“If ever there was a sign saying _turn back_ , this is it,” Fjord, this time, hand still resting on the hilt of his new sword, alert and aware, ready for any incoming danger.

But danger never came. No arrows, no ambushes, no Vollstreckers stumbling out of the bushes with spells mutating at their fingertips. Nothing. Just the creaking of the cart and the unnatural quiet of the wood.

Caleb rode up front with Caduceus on the ground, walking with the horses as they sensed death all around them and grew skittish. The wizard held the reins and kept his head down, watching his friend whisper reassurance to their four-legged friends instead of watching the dead. His arms itched; his hands shook. This was the legacy he swore off: another time, another life, and he might have been responsible for this execution.

The temperature dropped further as they put the hanged men and women behind them, the already cool air taking on a frigid edge now. By the time they were nearing the sounds of life, the persistent drizzle of the morning had turned to a light snow. The dead trees were slowly invaded by the evergreens of pine, cedar, and spruce, filling the air with a spicy, herbal scent that was heartily welcomed as the stench of death faded behind them. The road, somewhat protected from the rain by the canopy of trees here, was a little more hard-packed than the pure slop just a few miles south, but it still bore the mark of heavy traffic.

With distance, the mood turned merrier, largely due to Jester’s hard work; he could hear her asking Beau about the kinds of pastries they had in Kamordah for about the hundredth time (and Beau indulged her for the hundredth time as well), and somewhere behind them was the sound of Fjord and Nott having another one of their play-acted war of words. The horses, sensing the mood was calmer now, were in turn calmer as well. Caduceus stepped back onto the cart and plopped down next to Caleb, mouth moving behind sealed lips, a surefire sign that the cleric was chewing on some food for thought.

“Copper for your thoughts, Caduceus?” Caleb asked as he relaxed into the rumble of Frumpkin’s purr around his neck. He absentmindedly pulled the collar of his coat up to protect his familiar from the falling snow.

It took a long moment for his friend to respond. “I’m just—I’m trying to understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Well. I tend to think the quickest way to effect real change in the world is through understanding, rather than condemnation or violence.”

“The way the Empire does?”

Caduceus gave him a soft, regretful smile. “Yeah, like that. I think it’s valuable to at least make the attempt to understand viewpoints I don’t necessarily agree with. If I just cover my eyes and ears, then nothing gets solved.”

“Right.”

“But I have to admit, I’m having a bit of trouble stepping into the shoes of a person who would kill a child on the basis of the god they worship,” he sighed, ruffling some of his long, pastel-pink hair. “It’s _a lot_.”

Caleb reflexively laughed, though he found nothing about the situation funny. Caduceus was so much _wiser_ than him in so many ways, but there were limits even to his sagacity. Unfortunately, the blind, violent urges of radicalism entwined with national fervor was something Caleb understood far more intimately than any good man should.

 _You won’t be able hide it from them forever,_ Beau’s words came back to him, so strong that for a moment he thought the monk was whispering in his ear. A quick look back divested him of the notion, when he found her sitting side-by-side with Jester, engaged in the very un-Beau-like act of giggling over something in the tiefling’s sketchbook.

With an exhale of breath, he turned back to Caduceus and considered him in a new light. The cleric _was_ wise, wiser than anyone Caleb had ever met. Sure, he gave off the impression of being a bit simple sometimes, but still waters ran deep. Caleb glanced back once more, searching for blue. Caduceus was discreet, as well. No one would know but they two at the head of the cart. And maybe the horses.

Mind made up; Caleb answered:

“You are right. It is a lot. There are, ah, _a lot_ of reasons. Fear is a big one. Fanaticism, too. It’s quite easy to fall into one, the other, or both. It happened to me. Put in the right situation, it can happen to anyone.”

Caduceus cocked his head, debating whether he should ask his next question. Caleb, already knowing what he meant to ask, nodded, as if to say, ‘go on.’ The firbolg took a discreet look back at their companions, making sure no one was eavesdropping, when he was sure, he turned back to Caleb:

“When you were… with _them_ , did you…?” he left the rest of the question hang, but the point came across as clear as a knife.

The knife slashed a teenage girl from ear to ear, but the arterial spray was unspectacular. _Pretty thing_ , Bren thought as she gurgled something unintelligible while the light faded from her eyes, _pretty but stupid, and easily caught._ He sneered up at the older man with broken teeth and missing fingers, who watched on in horror. Perhaps it would be enough, perhaps not; daughters and sons were replaceable. Maybe next Master Ikithon would capture the wife. _But until then..._ With a lean and hungry look, Bren wiped his dagger on the traitor girl's threadbare dress to clean it of blood before he advanced.

“Not quite that young, no,” Caleb whispered. He had been so sure then. So sure. 

_You were a pretty thing, Bren Aldric Ermendrud,_ Caleb's thoughts were vicious, _pretty but stupid, and easily misled._

“But you did.”

_But I did._

Caleb nodded, throat suddenly dry and eyes prickling. Frumpkin took notice of his master’s change in mood and tried to bunt his head against the wizard’s cheek in a vain attempt to comfort him. It did not, but Caleb appreciated the effort all the same.

“I am now older and weaker and… very tired of fighting. But I was not always so: once I was as a rabid bull, and I saw the whole of the earth through ruby eyes. Terrible deeds came so easily to me.”

“How?” the firbolg asked. There was no judgment in the question, just an earnest desire to _understand_. If nothing else, Caduceus was a man of his word.

“Because I believed. You will do anything when you believe. Anything. No crime is too great.”

_You will kill children for scraps, you will maim men for laughs. You will write your father’s epitaph and wear black on your mother’s behalf. That is the power of faith._

Caduceus looked uncomfortable at the admission. It took Caleb a moment to understand why:

“I do not think you have to worry about your Wildmother sending you down my path,” he reassured despite his own misgivings with divinity. “She is a goddess; my masters were men. And even if she is fallible, you are much wiser than I was; I expect you to make the right choices.”

“Thanks Caleb. It means a lot,” Caduceus said, a hand coming up and patting the wizard on the shoulder, who only flinched slightly at human contact. “But I do have another question.”

“Go on, you have caught me in a sharing mood.”

“You said no crime was too great, right? But there was one, one crime too great, wasn’t there? Otherwise you wouldn’t be in this cart passing by the dead, you’d be up in that village ordering more to be hanged.”

Caleb stilled, and judging by the change in Caduceus’s expression, he had noticed the shadow pass over the wizard’s face. He absentmindedly scratched at his arms while searching for the right words to say:

“That…”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Caduceus entreated. “Some things are private, I understand.”

“It is not that I do not want to. It is a dreadful story. Awful. One that I may tell you in time, but this is, ah, not the place for it. Know only that it is the worst thing I have ever done. And I have committed a great many sins.”

“I understand,” said Caduceus again, and then his hand moved from one of Caleb’s shoulders to the other, wrapping the shorter man in a one-armed hug. “Look, I can’t offer you forgiveness, and I think you know that. That has to come from you. But what I can do is listen. If you ever want to talk more, I’m always near.”

“I will talk, but I will do so for the sake of your _understanding_. I am not seeking forgiveness.”

“Because you don’t think you can be forgiven?” asked Caduceus, perceptive as always.

“Because I should not be forgiven. It would be a great injustice if I was.”

Caduceus quirked his lips in that way he always did whenever he was thinking about how to perfectly phrase some tidbit of wisdom. “Forgiveness is… well, it’s a complicated thing. We see a god’s forgiveness and can’t accept what we see, but, honestly? We’re all a little bit blind, a little bit artless. We don’t see the tapestry of life in that vital way the gods do. The thread of your life was half used for evil, that’s true, but you can find someone good to help you finish your little corner of the tapestry.”

“Like your Wildmother?”

“Maybe her, maybe someone else. The gods are artists; they know there’s beauty to found in ugliness, and light to be found in the dark. But, well, it doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t believe it. They can offer you forgiveness, like I can, but only you can take it.”

“And if I do not wish to take it?”

“Then you don’t take it; no one can force you to. All I’m saying is that there are always vacancies. There was room enough for Fjord; there’s room enough for you somewhere, if you want.”

_Yes, room enough in the Nine Hells._

Caleb patted Caduceus’s knee consolingly. “I do not want. Fjord made a deal to save his life; it was ill-advised, but people who act out of desperation are not malicious, are not evil. They are not damned.”

“But people like you are?”

Caleb held up his blackened, soot-stained hands, the relics of that profaned flame he cast all those years ago on a quiet night in Zemnia:

“We are cursed by the work of our own hands.”

A silence stretched between the two for the next couple of moments, but it was not uncomfortable. There was an odd serenity in the snowfall, in the scent of pine, a calm before the storm of Durenwald. Caleb even felt a little bit lighter, clearer, but conversations with the cleric often had that effect.

“Be that as it may, conversation has a way of, hmm, cleansing the soul,” Caduceus mused at length; Caleb could not disagree. “Everyone needs someone; we don’t make it through life alone. Maybe you don’t need the gods in your life, not everyone does, but you need someone. I’m here and so are the others. Nott needs no introduction. Beau’s a hothead, but she cares; if anything, she cares too much. You and Fjord have more in common than you’ll ever know; Yasha too, you’ll see when we get her back. And Jester—” he halted suddenly. Caleb glanced up and found Caduceus regarding him knowingly. He knew. But then again, _of course_ he knew, he was Caduceus. He knew people like Caleb knew pyromancies. Caleb half-smiled and gave a shrug, much too comfortable on this cold, snowy morning to feel embarrassment. “—And Jester’s a bit of an artist herself. She may not always seem it, but she’s wise beyond her years.”

He thought of the slim hands that gifted him fine paper, hands that held his own, blue and cool and lovely against his burns and scars. He thought of the hands that offered to share the weight of his past. He thought of a big, impish grin and mischievous lilac eyes, and for a wonderful, fleeting moment, he thought he saw the world as she did: new, and big, and full of romance.

But it was only a trick of the light. The world was cold, and savage, and empty all the way through. He would not consume her light with his dark, no matter how much that cold, savage, empty part of him wanted to.

“That she is. But I do not wish to be a burden.”

“A burden, huh? You know, it’s funny. You two are so different, but so remarkably alike.”

“Are we?” Caleb asked, equal parts amused and dubious; he very much doubted anyone was like Jester Lavorre.

“I think so,” Caduceus said, and there was weight to his argument purely because he was the one who said it. “There’s a good man in you somewhere, Caleb Widogast, but he’s swimming in an ocean with a millstone around his neck. He’ll never get anywhere without help.”

A pithy, self-loathing line about swimming away from land formulated in Caleb’s head but died quietly at his lips. Instead he was content to drive on side-by-side with his odd, colorful friend.

“Aren’t you two _coooozy_?” an accented voice broke out from somewhere behind them, and both men turned to see the subject of their earlier conversation grinning devilishly at them, eyebrows waggling with _implication_.

Caleb glanced back over to Caduceus and belatedly realized that to Jester’s porn-addled mind, they did look rather cozy. But then the image of being romantically involved with the firbolg crossed his mind, and evidently it had for Caduceus as well, because they both laughed at the sheer absurdity of it. The taller man did, however, release Caleb and scoot away, though he did so only to pat the vacated space:

“Room for one more, if you’d like, Miss Jester,” he said, calm and easy.

He didn’t need to ask twice: in a flash, Jester had squeezed between them. Coaxed by Caleb’s mental prodding, Frumpkin languidly raised his head, and then his whole body. He stood on the wizard’s shoulders for a moment before hopping onto Jester’s lap, where he preened under her immediate attention:

“Hallo kitty!” Jester exclaimed, alternating between giving the spotted cat pats and allowing him to bunt against her hands. “Have I ever told you that you have a _very_ handsome cat?”

Frumpkin stood even straighter and miaowed his agreement, announcing to the world that he was indeed a very handsome cat. Caleb shook his head fondly and reached with a hand unoccupied by the reins to stroke behind his handsome boy’s ears, only for Frumpkin to deftly avoid it and instead seek out Jester’s touch. The little tiefling laughed while she obliged the feline, soft and tinkling.

“ _And_ he likes me more than yoooou,” Jester sang.

“He likes you only because you flatter him.”

“It’s not flattery if it’s the truth, Caleb,” she admonished, dragging his name out in the way only she could. “Aren’t I right, Beau?”

“Huh? Wha?” Beau had snuck over a few moments after Jester had and lounged at the front of the cart, but Caleb noticed that while she had been watching the trio on the driver’s bench, she hadn’t been paying much attention to the conversation.

“Eloquent,” commented Fjord, now in the middle of thoroughly beating Nott at a game of cards; they too had moved closer to the front of the cart, practically sitting side-by-side with the monk.

“Fuck you,” said Beau without much enthusiasm.

Jester held up Frumpkin by the sides. “Isn’t he very handsome, Beau?”

“Oh, uh—”

“That’s it!” Nott shouted suddenly, shrilly. “I call bullshit! You’re fucking cheating!”

Fjord jumped, at first taken aback as Nott threw down her hand, then his face twisted into a scowl. “Fuck you.”

“Fuck me!? Fuck you!”

“Would you believe it? _She’s_ accusing _me_ of being a cardsharp,” the half-orc complained to Beau, who couldn’t even pretend to be interested in the conversation.

“Because it’s what you are, you goddamned cheater!”

“Alright, then tell me— _how_ am I cheating? And don’t say it’s because I’m winning.”

“It’s because you’re winning!”

They degenerated into another fit of verbal sniping and several more exchanges of “fuck you,” though Caleb had good reason to believe Fjord was actually innocent in this affair. His amused aside to Beau was not without merit: Nott had no self-control, she’d cheat at a game of cards against her son if she could, let alone against Fjord. She also had a bad habit of projecting her sins onto others. As the argument grew louder Beau pinched the bridge of her nose and groaned out an, “Oh my god, fuck you both and shut the fuck up,” while Jester turned to Caleb and deposited Frumpkin on his lap:

“Fuck you,” she chirped at him.

“What? What did I do?”

“I don’t know, we’re all saying it, though.”

“Oh. Ah, _ja_. Well, fuck you too, then.”

Jester giggled, and then for the second time that day, pulled in close. She rested her head on Caleb’s shoulder, carefully angling it so that her horns wouldn’t poke him and sighed in something that sounded dangerously like contentment to the wizard’s biased ears.

__

_IV. On Merlin’s Tryst with the Succubus of Shadycreek Run_

“Careful now,” said the Crownsguard soldier as the Nein passed through the gate. “You must have seen the heretics in the woods on the way here. We got them all out there, but there are more of them hiding in town. _Rats in their holes_. But we’ll smoke ‘em out. Let us know if you see anything… _strange_.”

“Bastards. Fucking evil _bastards_ ,” Beau whispered harshly once they were out of earshot; she gripped the edges the cart hard enough to splinter the wood. There were murmurs of assent from the others, but Caleb couldn’t feel that righteous anger quite as easily as his compatriots. That dark part of his mind, the one that sounded like Master Ikithon and had the vestiges of loyalty to the Empire, questioned everything:

 _Why so certain those heretics are oppressed?_ Ikithon asked, voice still sounding like tearing wax paper. _Because they had a few children with them? Bren Aldric, you know better than anyone that children can be just as monstrous as adults. How many did you kill before you came of age? Twenty? Thirty? Can you even remember all of them? You heard the rumors. Be on your guard, boy. Empathy is the slow death of the will._

Durenwald was a cold, miserable town.

That shouldn’t have surprised Caleb. The road up here had been cold and miserable. This far north, all towns were cold and miserable, but even he, who had seen some of the Empire’s slovenliest pastoral wastes during his years on the run, was shocked by the squalor of this place. It was a town of moldering wood houses under leaky thatch roofs, sat on the banks of a dirty ocean inlet, meaning it reeked of half-rotted fish at all times. And all of that was before the refugees from the war had come piling in, looking for salvation in the form of a termite-infested fishing vessel that might carry them across the sea to Tal’Dorei. The appearance of the Crownsguard had apparently engendered some improvements—the once-patchwork partition of sodden timber had been reinforced to look like something resembling a proper city wall rather than a glorified fence—but despite the wall, and the patrols, and the whispers of wizards in the city, Durenwald was as shabby and shambling as could be. It would be easy pickings for a dedicated Dynasty squadron.

The cart rolled along, Caduceus at the helm once more, past a patchwork city of tents just inside the gates, loaded with people who had lost everything because of this war. It had been alarmingly easy to get in; while Jester’s forgeries were improving day-on-day, and the group had made a point of looking as dirty and ragged as possible, they still should have aroused some suspicion. Beau chalked it up to the tiefling’s skill (at which Jester dramatically bowed, awkward as it was while she was sitting down) and accused Caleb of being too paranoid when he brought up, but the wizard still had his reservations.

The cart stopped suddenly, and Caleb noted they had parked by a makeshift bazaar that sprouted out of another small alley of tents. People from all over the empire stood outside their canvas hideaways or sat on upturned buckets and broken stools, hawking mostly inexpensive wares with hopes of ridding themselves of any last bits or baubles in exchange for the solid weight of copper and silver before their exodus from Wildemount. Fjord, Jester, and Beau hopped down and made their way over to the nearest vendor, a waifish half-elf with coppery skin and bright eyes, with the intention of getting directions.

In the meanwhile, Caleb studied the environs some more. A series of old canals crisscrossed the town, supposedly built hundreds, if not thousands of years earlier, yet somehow, they were in better condition than houses built only a decade ago. To the northwest was the inlet, frozen over at this time of year, and the reason why Durenwald was swelling up with people like an overfilled balloon. They could come, but they wouldn’t be leaving until the thaw.

Further to the northeast, past the degrading homes and shops of the town, and another quarter filled with refugees and sharks looking to exploit them, was the edge of the forest again, though curiously it looked very different from the one they had spent the last day traveling through. It was a far way off, and Caleb could certainly admit he wasn’t the most eagle-eyed of people, but the trees looked alive to him, healthy and green-leaved. In many parts of the Empire, winter was approaching its end, but here, snows would fall for another month or two, and the forests’ rebirth would not be due until the end of that period. Yet there they stood, in full bloom. Caleb was only an amateur botanist, but if they were evergreens, they were of a type he had never come across in his studies.

The forest also seemed to rise in elevation until it pushed dramatically upward to a tree-dotted cliff, upon which an ancient, imposing manor sat, ghostly lights winking from its windows. A cold feeling like fear coiled in the pit of Caleb’s stomach, which coalesced into a heady mixture of nausea and persistent dread. If there truly were members of the Assembly here, if another beacon of the Luxon truly was here, then that castle on the cliff was where they would be hiding.

Caleb relayed his observations to the other two in the cart.

“Curious, indeed,” Caduceus said after a glance or two. “Good catch, Mister Caleb.”

Nott shaded her eyes and squinted against the fog and snow, then faced Caleb with a skeptical look. “Is that normal for mages to do? Bring forests back to life? Seems kind of, you know, off-brand for the whole evil magic spy-slash-killer thing they’ve got going on.”

“That is likely because it _is_ off-brand for them. Nature is not exactly, ah, inside a wizard’s _wheelhouse_ , so to speak. There are certainly individuals who could be responsible for such a thing, I just do not know if they would be part of the Assembly.”

“Do you think we should get one of the others to ask about it? I mean, we’re probably gonna end up going that way anyway, so it wouldn’t hurt to know…”

“Knowledge is always our greatest ally. But I think the timing should be right. We should ask questions like that among safer company. We have only just arrived, after all.”

“Right,” agreed Caduceus with a nod. “Maybe after we’ve settled in a bit.”

Caleb smiled weakly. “Right. Gotten our bearings and such.”

They waited, uncomfortable and feeling exposed even within the confines of the covered cart. Minutes passed and the others did not return. A shivering ocean breeze blew across the town with a mournful wail, the same sort of gusting, rollicking wind that started many of Fjord’s seafaring ghost stories, which he sometimes told late at night for Jester’s benefit.

“Where are they? What’s taking so long?” Caleb asked, hating how high and panicky he suddenly sounded. The marine wind did not help Caleb’s sudden bout of nausea, nor did the sinking feeling that they were already being watched. His mouth watered, a slight acidic tang like bile to it.

“They’re not far away,” Caduceus said calmly. “I can see them from here. Fjord’s talking to one of the hawkers; Beau and Jester are browsing.”

Caleb dared not chance another look out the cart again for fear that he might find a pair of sharp eyes staring back at him. So, he kept his eyes forward, seeing but unseeing, attempting to count the thread of the wagon cover and failing miserably until a little green hand covered his own, which he only then noticed had been furiously scratching at his other arm.

“Your name is Caleb. Caleb Widogast,” Nott said, drawing his gaze up. Her tattooed eyes were soft, much softer than goblinoid eyes had any right to be. “You are in a cart with Nott and Caduceus. You like cats. And books. And running cons with me. You are safe. We are all safe.”

Caleb breathed in and out, following his friend’s words and remembering the old teachings. _You must breathe, boy. Expel your fear; kill it. Fear is the poison of the will. Fear is the architect of hesitance. Hesitance is the paralysis of the will. Hesitance is the architect of death. Death is the end of the will. You must kill fear or be killed by it._

_“Now,” said Trent Ikithon, handing Bren a cruel, curved knife. “Kill your fear. Show me your will, boy.”_

There was no traitor for him to kill this time, just a tiny goblin who loved him more than he deserved, so Caleb breathed deeply, and killed his fear. It died a slow death on the mottled floor of the cart, gasping and screaming. He killed the fear of a woman with sharp features or a big man traveling through the crowd with eyes on a stopped carriage. He killed the fear of Fjord or Beau being caught unawares by a hidden dagger or a well-placed spell. He strangled the fear of Jester hanging from a noose in the middle of a dead wood, strangled it until his mind was silent.

“You are safe. _We are all safe_ ,” Nott was repeating, stroking his hand with her own. “Oh. Good. You’re back. Thought I’d really lost you for a second there.”

Caleb breathed out, slightly pleased that it was even. He was a monster, true, but occasionally Trent had managed to be a good teacher.

“Was I gone long?”

“Not too long,” Nott said. “But, usually you don’t… usually it’s _fire_ that does this to you. Not…” _whatever this is_ , Caleb finished for her _._

“I—I apologize. This is, ah, this is a terrible place. I do not like it; the air is, er, _wrong_ here,” Caleb said. Nott clambered over him and kissed his forehead, the way his mother had done when Astrid and Eodwulf convinced him that Asmodeus had escaped the Divine Gate and was hiding in his father’s garden shed all those years ago:

“We can turn around, if you want. We don’t have to do this,” she said.

“No,” said Caleb firmly. “If we leave, how many of these people die?”

Nott’s answer was equally firm. “If it means keeping _you_ safe, _they_ can all rot.”

He was touched, but he said, “We stay.”

“If you’re sure,” Nott sighed, eyeing him dubiously.

“I am sure. And please, do not mention this to the others.”

The goblin looked even wearier, if it was possible. “My lips are sealed.”

“They’re on their way back,” said Caduceus, glancing back at Caleb and nodding, as if to say, ‘all clear.’

By the time Fjord and Beau climbed into the wagon Caleb had fully regained control of his faculties; he once again picked up his book on the Zydellian Empire and promptly stuck his nose in it.

“Down the bridge,” said Fjord, pointing a little ways northwest, where the water and the forest met on the horizon. “The tavern’s up north on the wharf.”

“By the forest?” asked Caleb, unable to help himself, making room for the half-orc to sit next to him while Nott scooted over for Beau.

One of Fjord’s scarred eyebrows quirked with interest as he seated himself. “Yeah. Shopkeeper said to keep clear of it. Says there’s an ‘enchantment’ on the wood.”

“Really? Did she elaborate at all?”

“Unfortunately, no. She wouldn’t tell me much more, looked scared when I tried to dig deeper. I had to buy something from her just so she wouldn’t run me off,” Fjord extended a fist and unclenched it just enough that a small, green necklace dropped out and hung from his curled fingers.

“Oooh, it’s very pretty,” Jester, who lollygagged behind, had finally made her way onto the cart with what appeared to be small tome tucked under her arm and immediately took interest in the bauble. “Did you buy it for me, Fjord? That’s like, the _sweetest thing_.”

Fjord was unmoved by her fanged grin. “No. As I said, I bought it so the lady wouldn’t run me off. ‘Sides, it’s all weathered; it isn’t worth shit."

The cart picked up as Caleb inspected the necklace. It was a small conch shell fashioned from long-oxidized copper, though well-designed, Fjord was right, the trinket probably wasn’t even worth a single copper.

“So what you’re saying is the shopkeeper shook you down?” Beau said with her signature mocking grin.

Fjord snorted. “Hardly. Besides, I have more than enough gold to burn, unlike _some of us_ ,” he made a point of staring at each of the girls, implicitly referencing the eye-watering cost of the tattoos they’d gotten from Orly.

“You’re just jealous that we have cool tattoos and you’re still ugly and _mean_ ,” Nott sniped.

“Jealous of poor impulse control? Please.”

“Wow, you’re one to talk ya’ fuckin’ hypocrite. If you got a tattoo it’d be a big red button right on your forehead.”

Banter ensued. Caleb itched to return to his reading but caught Jester’s gaze with his own as he reached for the history book. She blinked slowly, like Frumpkin did when he was feeling especially affectionate. Then she pulled the novel she’d been carrying out from under her arm and waved it tantalizingly, a coy smile tugging at her lips. Suddenly, the tiefling was on all fours, crawling with exaggerated pomp to his side of the cart while maintaining unswerving eye contact with the wizard. Jester’s tail flicked happily behind her as she did so, again reminding Caleb of a hidden feline disposition, of a smug cat who had caught her mouse. When she was in front of him, only inches from his face, she dropped the book into his lap.

Caleb set the history of Zydell aside and picked up Jester’s offering. Predictably, it was a smutty novel, with two figures carnally entwined on the inside cover: one a handsome, if pale elven or half-elven man, and the other a pearly tiefling who could have been a long-lost twin of Ophelia Mardun.

“You have brought me porn,” Caleb commented, unsure as to why Jester had made such a show of giving it to him.

“Mhm,” she agreed brightly. “But not just _any_ porn.”

“Do go into detail, I am riveted.”

“He,” she pointed a delicate finger at the man in throes of passion, “is the hero of the story.”

“Yes, that is a very… _heroic_ pose. And why does this matter?”

“Well. You know. He is. A. Wizard!”

“Oh,” said Caleb flatly, before he recalled their conversation prior to breakfast. “ _Oh_.”

“Yes, _oh_. A wizard hero with his brave companion,” now she traced the horns of the tiefling woman, “a paladin of _The Dawnfather_.”

“Ah, yes, I can see her holy symbol,” Caleb drawled, seeing the emblem of Pelor nestled between her exposed breasts. “Such commitment to accuracy.”

She folded her arms and pouted at him. “It’s more accurate than what _you_ told _me_.”

“And would you be so kind to remind me of what it is that I told you?”

“I think you lied to me. You were telling me wizards were _always_ villains and I looked for, like, _five minutes_ and proved you wrong,” said Jester, poking Caleb’s chest accusingly.

“So you have,” Caleb said. He flipped through the book and blushed to the roots of his hair at some of the prose and _all_ of the illustrations.

“We should read it together.”

“We absolutely should not.”

“What? Why?”

“I am not going to read smut with you, Jester.”

“Why noooot?” she whined, but then there was a star-like twinkle in her eyes. “You're afraid that you're going to get hard, aren't you, Cay-leb?”

This woman was going to be the death of him.

“No, I am not.”

“Good, because it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. I’m sure you have, like, a super-cool dick.”

“Thank you,” said the wizard dryly. “But there are many reasons not to do so beyond the relative flaccidity of my dick in your presence, it being _wildly inappropriate_ is at least top two on that list.”

“Inappropriate? Me and Beau read smut together all the time, it’s nothing _special_ or anything.”

“Have you both agreed on that?”

“Caleb, really, it’s just smut, stop being such a prude. Gosh, everyone makes such a _big deal_ about sex.”

“That is because for a lot of people it is a big deal.”

Jester rolled her eyes. “It’s just people rubbing up against each other.”

Caleb opened his mouth to protest, but then clamped it shut as he _really_ considered Jester for a moment. For just a second under his clever gaze, she looked very young and very unsure of herself. It must have been very difficult to grow up the lone child in as adult a place as the Lavish Chateau. Marion Lavorre loved her daughter, that Caleb knew for certain, but he was also certain that all the love in the world could not make up for the fact that a child should not be raised in a brothel. Jester spent her childhood around people who viewed sex as a transaction and read about heroes who were given sex as a prize, of course it would just be ‘rubbing up’ against someone to her.

A part of him, the part of him that was forever the sickly boy from the Zemni Fields, mourned for the lonely blue girl who had grown up locked in a gilded cage.

The wizard sighed. It would be of no use to argue with her, to browbeat her into belief. Love was a great and useless, stupid passion that could only be understood through experience. One day she would fall in love, really in love, the kind of love that would gnaw into her bones and make a proper home of them. The kind of love that would make her weak and foolish in the way it made everyone weak and foolish. He doubted she would have the same opinion about sex then.

_“Love is a cancer, boy,” Trent said once, in one of his very rare, friendlier moods, “it taints the will, fractures the resolve. It is blind and stupid. It only grows and grows, metastasizing within you until you are its puppet. Man is a useless passion and love his most worthless child.”_

Something like hurt flashed across his face as he said it, but it was only there for a microsecond before Trent was once again cold and impassive. But it was enough to make Bren wonder if even his arrogant, murderous master had once been a young man with useless passions. That expression was not of a man who simply scorned love at the first opportunity, but rather of one who had been thoroughly scarred by it. Had he been spurned? Had he loved and lost? Had he felt that same crushing dependence on another that Bren felt for Astrid, only to have it torn away? There was so much to unpack in one little look.

For one day, Bren came dangerously close to empathizing with the old man. Master Ikithon made him pay dearly for such weakness. 

Now, nearly two decades later, Caleb scooted over and opened the book. “Sit,” he said wearily. Jester positively beamed at Caleb, no longer looking quite so young or vulnerable as she crawled to his side and tucked into him.

“Caleb, back me up here,” Fjord said after a moment, still in taking fire from a combined front of Beau and Nott, “you, me, and Cad all agreed that it’s a shitty investment, right?”

The three looked over, expecting a dry, Zemnian-accented answer, but only found Caleb with his nose in a book. Predictable. What was less predictable, of course, was the fact that Jester sat next to him, looking every bit as enthralled as the wizard.

They read only for five minutes before Caduceus called out, “We’re here!” and while Jester was a suitably quick reader, Caleb noted she was still far slower than he. As a result, they’d only gotten six pages into the prologue, which was far before any smut was transcribed (a very conservative move by the author, Jester had remarked). Jester was immensely disappointed, Caleb immensely relieved.

‘Here’ was a wharf that could only be called such with extreme exaggeration. Yes, there were a few small vessels moored to it, but the wharf was small, ugly, and made up of splintering wood that simply broke off here and there all the way to the pier’s edge. Sounds of chatter filled the air, but they were not excited or bustling, but rather a low droning hum of the living dead that echoed from a dockside wino-haunt, which must have been their destination. There weren’t even seagulls to annoy passersby, just a few quiet crows and a dog that looked sick with the mange tied to a mooring post. He howled mournfully upon seeing Caleb exit the cart, and the wizard resisted the urge to howl back.

Alongside Caleb, the rest of the Mighty Nein took stock of the wharf, each of them underwhelmed at the sight. Jester, used to seeing magnificent galleons and frigates docking in Nicodranas, and Fjord, who was used to sailing on the aforementioned frigates, wore twin expressions of dismay at the environs. Smirking, Beau clapped Fjord’s shoulder and then regarded the rest of the group:

“Long way from the Menagerie Coast, eh?” she asked.

“Oh, I would not say that. It is quite like Darktow had it been run by inbreds,” Caleb quipped. He, Fjord, and Beau shared a chuckle; Jester swatted at his shoulder, but it was only half-hearted, at best:

“Caleb, that’s _mean_ ,” she said.

“But true,” both Fjord and Nott chorused at once and immediately glared at each other.

That chilling wind that brought with it an old, decaying smell returned a bit stronger this time, as if nature itself took offense to their mockery. But, Caleb hypothesized as he looked upon the gray-frozen ocean and the dirty ice bluffs that occasionally pierced through the frosted sheets, even the most ardent defenders of Melora would have had to agree that nature goddess had gotten a little lazy in this small corner of her creation. Of course, Caleb was a good scientist, and a hypothesis had to be tested, especially when he had two perfectly good subjects with him.

“The Wildmother was certainly, ah, _ambitious_ with this patch of earth, was she not, Fjord?” he asked, to a snort from Beau. The half-orc gave him a sidelong glance and shrugged:

“Of course,” he said in that disaffected way he reserved only for when he was talking out of his ass. “Nature does not always have to be beautiful. In fact, the ugliness of it can sometimes make you appreciate the beautiful parts more. Or something like that.”

“I hate to interrupt,” said Caduceus, giving the group one of his patented fatherly smiles, “but we did come here for a reason, remember?”

“Right,” said Fjord. “It’s no big deal. Everyone just stick to the plan and we’ll be out of here in no time.” 

The _plan_ , if it could be called such, involved waltzing into the bar, finding the keeper, and speaking a simple pass phrase. That was it, simple, easy. According to Essek, the pass phrase would grant them audience with one of the Dynasty’s most trusted agents, who was overseeing this operation. The agent would be the one to get the Nein up to speed and then they would turn the reins over, providing support and intel while the party figured a way to recover the beacon. That was _the plan_. Given their recent track record with plans, however, no one in the group was feeling especially confident that things would go smoothly.

“Well,” said Nott, voice muffled behind the porcelain mask she’d taken to wearing again, “time’s wasting.”

Beau took that as a cue to march, Fjord and Caduceus following close behind.

Nott ducked behind Caleb, using his coat to hide her movement like they did in the early days.

Jester lightly knocked one of her horns against Caleb’s shoulder, smiling brightly at him as hustled away to catch up to the rest of the group.

Caleb exhaled slowly. Time was wasting, running out. For this town if they could not find that beacon. For Jester and meeting her fellows in faith. For Yasha, forced into atrocities at the hands of Obann. For himself, and all the sins he had wrought.

“Time’s wasting,” he said, and allowed himself one timid look at the imposing manor on the clifftop above.

And then he followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully that wasn't complete garbage. Let me know what you guys think!
> 
> PJF


	2. Sin-Eaters, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a frozen town at the edge of the empire, flush with the dead and dying, Caleb, Jester, and Fjord go on the hunt for a missing Krynn operative.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the axiomatic truths of D&D, and TTRPGs in general, is to never split the party. Whether it be 5e, 2e, Cyberpunk, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and so on, splitting the party has always been considered the best way to kill the party. As a DM myself, I think this axiom is complete horseshit (it requires clever encounter management and for the DM to be aware of how they split time between players, which can be difficult, but is certainly doable), but the myth persists.
> 
> Thankfully, this is a written story, not a session of D&D, so I'm free to split the party however I wish without tripping into the death spirals so often associated with doing so. 
> 
> For you fantasy nerds out there, there are a few references to fantasy novels littered all over this chapter, the most notable of which being The Black Company, which has a few references in this chapter alone, and much of this 'arc' of the story is in part inspired by the Raker chapter of the first Black Company novel, with Fjord taking the role of Raven and Caleb as Croaker. And Jester as Jester, because let's be honest, the early BC books are a bit of a sausage fest. So, uh, thanks Glen Cook.

“I don’t know, dude. I just—I just drink blood, dude.”

\- Death Grips,  
_The Fear_

___  
  
_

_Nulla. The Devil’s Work_

Out of the Egg the hell-knight came, wreathed in horned, skeletal armor and cinderous flame. The black blade moaned hideously in its clawed hand, screaming for its fill of blood. With some trouble, the knight directed the runic greatsword at its foes, and the blade, too, burst into flame.

What little color was left in the vampiress's dead cheeks drained away as the fane filled with smoke and the sulfurous stench of the Nine Hells.

“Bren,” she murmured, “what have you done?”

__  
  
  
_I. The Old Man on the Sea_

There were portents and there were _portents_. This, Caduceus said to a sea of uncomprehending faces, was the latter. For a man often derided as a dullard, he certainly loved to wax sphinxian.

Nearly all of them were dirty and tired. Some wore the shell-shocked look that Caleb surmised he must’ve adopted many times when he killed. More twitched, jumping at the smallest noises. A few of them chattered lowly in hushed tones, like they were afraid of someone overhearing. He had seen it before, this paranoia, this fear. He had _felt it_ before.

_Kill your fear, boy._

It was a surreal, brutal scene, standing in the taproom of _The Old Man_ and watching the patrons. In many ways, they were kindred: The Raven Queen had crowned them all with rotted garlands; they could never again be free of her.

“Real lively in here,” Beau whispered next to him, clinking her shot of whisky against his, “it’s a riot.”

They both drank. It tasted like death.

“They have lost everything, Beauregard,” he chided only half-heartedly, the atmosphere was getting to him as well.

Beau shrugged, her expression a mask of indifference. “But they’re still alive. They have a chance that a lot of others didn’t.”

“Ha. I am sure that thought will bring them much comfort.”

“God, you’re as fucking depressing as they are. I’m gonna go bother Jester, you can go hang out with the stiffs,” Beau slinked away to the end of the bar, where Caduceus watched the taproom with serene disinterest, and Jester stared forlornly at the glass of murky water given to her in the absence of milk.

Caleb considered joining the other patrons for a moment, but immediately thought better of it on second glance. He was no ray of sunshine, to be sure, but this lot was too gloomy even for him. So instead he found his way to Nott, who, now disguised as the halfling Veth, sat next to Fjord as he sweet-talked the bartender.

They had walked into this miserable little bar, _The Old Man_ , with something resembling a plan based off of what Essek had told them via Jester’s _Sending_ messages. It hadn’t taken long for their natural paranoia to win out, and for Fjord to volunteer to ‘assess’ the bartender for any sign of duplicity before they revealed themselves to him. Fortunately, Fjord was a very good conversationalist when he had to be, so as Caleb sidled up to Nott, he found the half-orc and the human bartender laughing and exchanging stories like old schoolmates.

 _At least someone in this godforsaken tavern is having fun,_ Caleb thought.

“Looks like it’s going well,” Caleb said lowly to Nott as he collapsed into the rickety stool next to her. It gave a little jitter as he did so, and the wizard was certain he heard the wood crack a bit.

“Oh yeah, best friends,” Nott said dismissively. “Good to see Fjord has found his level.”

“Oh?”

“You know, inbreds,” the halfling-turned-goblin-turned-halfling-again said in a conspiratorial whisper, referencing Caleb’s earlier unflattering summation of Durenwald.

“So,” Fjord said next to them, having changed tack from an old sea story of his, “I have a bit of a, er, _special request_.”

The bartender was a nondescript man: brown hair, brown eyes, brown beard. But when his eyebrow quirked in response, the laughter slowly vanishing from his expression like a distant memory, he developed a sudden hawkish sharpness that raised Caleb’s hackles. Out of reflex, the wizard's hands dug into his pockets, seeking out the material components for a proper spell should the conversation head south.

“See that girl there?”

The bartender looked in the direction where Fjord pointed. “The milk girl?”

“No, the other one.”

“Ah, Miss Muscles.” He waved over his stomach, surreptitiously indicating Beau's rather impressive array of abdominal muscles.

“Yeah that’s the one,” nodded Fjord. “See, it’s her birthday, you know. And I’d been saving a bottle of Kamordan Red for her back home before the Cricks rolled through.”

The bartender froze in place for a moment, as though remembering something. “Kamordan Red, you say?” he said. “Must be a special girl.”

“Oh, she is,” agreed Fjord, and he actually sounded like he meant it. “You wouldn’t happen to have one of those _Kamordan Reds_ on hand, would you?”

The bartender looked at Fjord with a new, calculating shrewdness to his gaze. He then looked out over the crowd; none of them were paying attention. When he spoke, he spoke slowly, carefully:

“She looks like she knows her wine.”

“She does. She's actually a bit of a snob, really.”

“I have a few things in the back room that might interest a discerning woman,” the bartender said, “perhaps you would like to pick one out for her?”

Fjord gave a shark-toothed smile. “That would be lovely, thank you.”

Caleb did not hear the next thing the bartender said, for he leaned in close and whispered whatever it was into Fjord’s ear alone. Then he swept away to the backroom and, presently, a youngish halfling girl took over in the front. Fjord waited a moment to politely nod at the bartender's replacement, and then angled surreptitiously over to where Caleb and Nott sat:

“We go in, but only two at a time,” he said. “We arouse less suspicion that way, I guess.”

“Fair enough. Are you taking Beau, then?” Caleb asked.

Fjord glanced over at Beau and shook his head. “Maybe not. You and I have got the offensive magic. Shit goes south, maybe we can just blast our way out.”

Nott looked unconvinced. “That’s a gamble, Fjord.”

Caleb could not say he was particularly swayed by Fjord's anemic logic either, but he nodded anyway. He did not come this far only to chicken out at the first opportunity. “What would you have me do, Fjord?”

“If they’re friends, then they know who you are. If they’re not… well, you look pretty unassuming, no offense. We might be able to get the drop on them if they underestimate us.”

“Fair enough,” Caleb whispered. “Veth, would you be so kind as to keep our sommelier distracted?”

By distracted, he of course meant the opposite of such. He wanted Beau, Caduceus, and Jester keeping their eyes peeled for anything that looked like a setup while he and Fjord spoke with Essek’s contact. Thankfully, Caleb and Nott were often on the same wavelength and she took his hidden meaning to heart. One second she was on the stool next to him, the next she had disappeared and reappeared by Caduceus at the end of the bar, where she and the other three spoke in hushed tones.

A moment passed before the half-orc stood. No one noticed, each person too preoccupied with drowning their own sorrows. He slipped around the counter and smiled at the bartending replacement, who did not return the favor as Fjord disappeared into the back room. As soon as he did so, Caleb slid out of his chair and did the same at a leisurely pace.

 _Act as if you belong, Bren Aldric,_ barked the voice in his head that sounded like Ikithon, _it should be easy enough to mingle with dirt seeing as you come from it._

The halfling did not smile at Caleb either as he passed by her. He looked out over the taproom one more time before entering the doorway to make sure no one was watching; only a pair of lilac eyes met his gaze. Jester cocked her head, worrying her bottom lip, seeming to say _Be careful_ without actually speaking it aloud.

Unsure of how else to allay her fears, Caleb did what he thought Fjord might do in the same situation: he winked at her and crossed the threshold into the back room. By the looks of it, it was a storeroom, and Fjord waited by another doorway past a sack of peanuts and a crate of rotgut:

“Through there,” he said, jabbing a finger toward the second door, a creaky little thing with all its paint peeling off. 

“Dwueth’var?” Caleb asked, hushed.

Fjord cracked a knuckle and wriggled the fingers on his sword hand meaningfully. “Never far away. Don’t worry.”

Caleb felt considerably more at ease as he grasped the splintered handle of the peeling door and pushed it open. Nevertheless, as he entered the cramped office space (really just an old writing desk set against bare walls and a three-legged stool from the bar counter), Caleb kept his hands in his pockets, never far away from the bat guano and sulfur needed to cast a fireball.

The bartender leaned on the ancient writing desk and regarded the two curiously. “So, you’re them,” he said simply. His drawl was different now, more musical and breathier—the accent Caleb associated with The Bright Queen and Xhorhas.

“I confess I do not see any wine here,” Caleb said blandly.

“I confess, too. Had I any proper wine in this backwater, I’d be more than willing to share with the _Heroes of the Dynasty_ , but alas,” he laughed when both Caleb and Fjord perked at the title. “You know, I really didn’t believe it when the Shadowhand told me. Sure, half-orcs and tieflings, I get, but two _humans_ , heroes of the Dynasty with the favor of The Bright Queen herself… that really is something else. I've been out in the field too long, I think; time was, a human would rather cut off his own arm than betray the Empire.”

“Times change,” Caleb shrugged.

“Times change but humans never do,” countered the bartender, eyes flashing an odd color for just a moment before they settled back on dull brown. The scent of ozone tickled Caleb’s nose, the way it usually did whenever magic was nearby.

"This pub is rather old," the wizard said, "how did one such as you come to... ingratiate yourself to this town? It must have been rather difficult, given your, ah, _well-hidden_ prejudice."

The bartender's eyes glittered once more. "The inlet is frozen over. With a suitable mastery of the arcane and boots of stone, you can become _anyone_ here. Even a lowly tavernkeep, should you wish." He clucked his tongue in disappointment. "Your species is dreadfully dull, Human. While that makes it a trifle to impersonate your kind, the company also makes it infinitely more torturous."

Fjord crossed his arms, reminding Caleb strongly of Beau when she measured the worth of someone and found them deficient. “Are we here for a reason or did you just want to irritate us?”

“No,” said the bartender, almost mockingly, “no disrespect intended.”

“Then speak before I lose my patience." All the friendliness had left Fjord’s eyes, leaving only a cold, yellow stare behind. The other man's face twitched, his jaunty grin falling into a sneer for the slightest moment. Looking at the scene now, Caleb found it hard to believe that just five minutes ago, the two had been swapping stories like a couple of old sailors.

“As you wish,” relented the bartender. He affected nonchalance, but Caleb had been trained to read people, and the wizard could tell he’d lost some of his bravado. Fjord could be properly terrifying when he wanted to be.

“Go on, then,” Caleb said, as almost-mockingly as the disguised bartender had been.

The man in question shot Caleb a dirty look, lip curling further, before replying. “I can’t provide you with much beyond directions. The actual details of what you need to get done and how to get it done will be handled by the Captain.”

“And where might the captain be?” Fjord asked with a sneer to match the other man's.

“Back the way you came, in town. We would have set up shop here, but... well, there isn't exactly a whole lot of space for us here. So we moved: old butcher’s shop a little ways north from the Eastgate, which is past that refugee bazaar. The Captain isn’t there right now, but it’s a safehouse. The Crownsguard aren’t likely to find you if you make your way there and wait.”

“Thanks,” said Fjord shortly before turning on his heel and marching out the door. Caleb stared after him for a second as surprised as the disguised Krynn operative was at how abruptly the conversation ended. Belatedly, he realized he should be following, and gave a little startled step in the direction of the door.

“Human,” called the Krynn.

Caleb smiled faintly. “You have me at a loss, my friend. You know that I am human, but I do not know the ancestry by which I should condescend to you.”

The man snorted. “Perhaps it’s best it stays that way. Look, I did not mean to condescend to you.”

“Forgive me, friend, but I doubt that very much.”

The bartender looked irritated but took the jibe in stride. “I… apologize for my behavior. It was untoward. But we’re in a tenuous situation, and the Shadowhand has multiplied the difficulty of our task by sending you to us. He risks our lives for theirs,” he pointed in the vague direction of the taproom.

“I can see the Shadowhand’s dilemma,” said Caleb, “they are just civilians. Refugees. They have already been scarred terribly by this war.”

“Hardly a dilemma. Fog of war. People die. That is the way of things, _our way_. The Shadowhand knows that.”

_Cold and calculating, spoken like a true warrior. You could learn from him, Bren Aldric._

“Perhaps he is trying a new way.”

“Perhaps,” said the Krynn as if he was assessing Caleb. “Friendly advice though, Human. Keep a close eye on your friends. They have a habit of _disappearing_ in this town. Wouldn’t want to see that lovely little halfling girl or that pretty milk tiefling of yours wind up in an alley strung up with their own entrails.”

Now Caleb snorted, _not condescending indeed_.

“Oh, I am sure they would be the ones doing the stringing, Krynn.”

"I'm sure they could. But I'm just telling you, in this town, no-one is your friend. Those heretics and The Lady are two sides of the same coin, both'll cut your hearts out to satisfy their respective masters."

Caleb's eyebrow quirked. "The Lady?"

"She's an Imperial; gave the order to hang those animals in the forest."

"Hm. The Empire is nothing if not strict, but hanging thirty people, including children, seemed excessive. I do wonder what they did to deserve such, ah, retribution."

"They're a cult, with all the pitfalls therein. The ones that were hanged were caught red-handed sacrificing some refugee boy in a ritual for better weather, or something. Captain's got the details better than I do, all I can give you is speculation from the drunkards."

"Human sacrifice," remarked Caleb. "Wow."

"Wow, indeed. And The Lady was the one who had them all executed on the spot. Nasty piece of work, that one, but she's damned effective. Wish we had her on our side."

"A mage?"

"Probably. Don't know. She practically lives in that manor up the cliff, doesn't show up around town much and when she does it's only to visit the physician's. Scuttlebutt says she's sweet on him, but it's only rumors." He shrugged, though he looked like he wanted to say more.

"And I take it you have your own opinion on the rumors?"

The Krynn shrugged again. "Yeah I have my guess, and it's that people like her don't fall for backwater barber-surgeons. But, like I said, the Captain'll keep you better apprised of the situation. You may not want to dawdle, _friend,_ " the scornful note to his voice resurfaced as he seemed to realize their conversation had almost turned friendly.

“Very well, _friend_ ,” Caleb replied, turning toward the door with the flaking paint. “I _thank you_ for your advice.”

“Anytime.”

Caleb stepped across the threshold and hurried back to the taproom, feeling sick to his stomach, though he couldn’t quite identify why. At first, he thought it might have been the threat relayed against Nott and Jester, but that was absurd, both were more than capable of taking care of themselves. But then he thought it was the way the man spoke that bit at his stomach like an overactive ulcer: that oily pretense of friendship, the casually dropped threat, the complete disregard for life… it was like speaking to a reflection of himself, of the old, unbroken Bren.

“What took you so long?” Fjord was asking, and Caleb started again, having been thoroughly lost in his thoughts.

“The bartender gave me some advice.”

“Did he,” Fjord stated dryly. “And what was the advice?”

“To keep an eye on my friends.”

“Wow. Would you believe I’d never thought of that one?” he said with a snicker.

“I’m not surprised,” Caleb also chanced a smirk, “it is a very novel idea.”

They both shared a chuckle as they rounded the bar counter and took the same seats they’d occupied before their meeting with the Krynn. After a moment, he walked out, again a completely unassuming human bartender. The halfling scurried back behind the door and Caleb idly wondered if she, too, was a goblin disguised as a halfling for the benefit of Empire eyes. The Krynn made a show of looking at them apologetically:

“I’m truly sorry nothing was to your liking, sir.”

“Well it’s not me. _All_ of that was to my liking,” Fjord responded easily, “but I doubt it’d be to _her_ liking.”

"Well, you might find more luck elsewhere in town."

"We certainly might. Just let me finish this drink and we'll square up the tab."

The tab was squared quickly and easily. While Durenwald didn't have much, it appeared to be well stocked with ales and spirits, keeping the cost of their dockside detour low. As they gathered their things to trudge outside once more, Caleb caught the bartender looking him over appraisingly. Once caught, he nodded severely and went back about his work. As he stepped back out into the salt-and-fish-flecked air, someone nudged the wizard's shoulder, and upon looking over he found Jester to be the culprit:

"Psst," she whispered far too loudly to be secretive, "what did you guys talk about?"

Fjord answered for the both of them once they were back on the cart, which had, rather miraculously, not been stolen. His recollection was met with several cries of outrage, Jester among the most offended:

"I _knew_ that guy was a fucking dick!" she exclaimed. "Only assholes don't like milk! Right, Beau?"

"Right, uh, sure, Jessie. Fjord, you said the place we're looking for is back past that hobo bazaar?"

Fjord nodded at the monk while Jester pouted. Caleb surmised she was put out at being ignored, especially by Beau, who so often made a point of indulging Jester at her silliest. But it was a tense situation, they all knew that, and Beau could be forgiven for being less-than-attentive just this once. Stepping in for his monk friend, Caleb caught Jester’s eye and smiled reassuringly, just to let the tiefling know he and the others appreciated her attempt at levity, even if they were not showing it. She returned it, but her smile was tight.

"Then I guess that's where we're heading?" Caduceus asked from the front of the cart.

"It is our best bet," said Caleb, attention still half-divided between Jester and the rest of the group.

"Well alright then. One butcher's shop coming up."

They settled into a rhythm again, trundling forward in their little cart as they had that morning. The bazaar was far less packed the second time they crossed past; Fjord stopped to get specific directions past the Eastgate, but they were quickly moving once again. The wizard paid it all little mind, having enticed Jester into reading some more of the Mighty Nein’s newly bought tome of sin. The book, called _The Devil’s Entrance_ , centered around a treasure-hunting hedge wizard named Roland and his chance encounter with a wandering paladin of Pelor, Aurania, who was on a holy pilgrimage to discover a lost relic said to be hidden in a nameless city at the edge of the world. It was fast-paced and surprisingly smartly written for wank-fodder, but it was surprisingly slow on the good stuff: at twenty pages in they’d still not come across any smut, much to the dismay of Jester, who claimed this was not at all normal for erotica and feared she had bought a normal, _non-smutty_ book.

“The horror,” commented Caleb dryly when she voiced her trepidation, and then he flipped a number of pages ahead to find a picture of Aurania straddling Roland in a decidedly smutty fashion. “You need not worry, Jester, your desired porn will arrive soon.”

“Don’t say it like _that_!” Jester exclaimed, seemingly insulted.

“Like what?” Caleb asked, genuinely confused.

“Like that! ‘ _Your desired porn_ ,’” she mimicked his accent. “You make me sound like a _pervert_ or something!”

Caleb pinched the bridge of his nose. “Jester. I do not know how else to tell you this, but you _are_ a pervert.”

“Am not.”

“You very much are too.”

“I am not,” she said again, but she was grinning.

“You read nothing but smut.”

“I like romance,” defended the tiefling.

“There is a rather distinct line between romance and porn.”

“No there isn’t. You only think that because you’re a _boring_ old prude, always reading histories instead of romance.”

“Time is cyclical, Jester, history is useful in illuminating the present.”

“History is a bunch of old people complaining about how much better shit was when they were young.”

“A fair assessment, but too reductive. Regardless, I seem to recall you candidly discussing my dick not but an hour ago.”

“I just said it was _cool_ , Caleb. Like, it’s a compliment, you know? Now if I told you to take it out and show me how _cool_ it is,” she tittered obnoxiously as Caleb pinkened, “ _that_ would make me a pervert.”

“And that is my cue to return to reading.”

“Awh, but you’re so cute when you blush, Caaay-leb.”

He did not respond, accepting defeat with relative grace, and prayed to whatever god would lend him an ear that his face did not pinken any further. As usual, the gods were unkind to him. Jester took a moment to bask in her victory over him in the art of banter, and then returned to reading with him.

They passed the Eastgate, which was more of an Eastdoor, truth be told, and entered into a northeastern block of buildings. Like the rest of the town, the buildings had seen better years, but this district seemed especially acute in its disrepair. A stench of despair floated around their crumbling eaves, and a stench of stench as well: with a wrinkled nose, Caleb could tell they were getting close to where the meat in town was prepared, and none of it smelled particularly fresh. Next to the wizard, Jester also scrunched her nose and made an exaggerated _blegh_ sound, which was far more adorable than it had any right to be.

“Weird,” said Beau, holding her the hem of her robe over her nose as they rolled on further.

“What?” asked Nott, head turning to the monk, seemingly unaffected by the miasma.

“Dunno. Crownsguard were on the streets everywhere back on the main roads. Haven’t seen one past that gate back there.

“Haven’t seen much of anyone, really,” said Caduceus from the front. He was right: the streets in this district were dead as could be, not a soul in sight.

“I know, kinda fuckin’ weird isn’t it?” Beau leaned over just a little to peek out from the cover of the wagon.

“That’s probably good for us, though. Less Crownsguard, less trouble,” said Fjord with a shrug as Beau pulled back into the cart, curiosity evidently satisfied.

Nott, in what was something of a miracle, actually agreed with the warlock. “Well, they’d want to choose something a bit out of the way for their base, wouldn’t they? Makes sense not many people would be around.”

“Probably. Just gives me the heebie-jeebies, is all,” was all Beau said. Caleb could tell she had more on her mind, but judging by her expression, Beau wasn’t quite ready to bare them all yet.

They arrived at the butcher’s shop, a dilapidated thing of old timber sat under wide eaves which were meant to protect from the torrid rain the town received, but the cracked shingles of the roof above looked in dire need of a replacement. Still, while the building had seen better days, it had space enough to afford a few Dynasty agents a place to plot their next move.

They entered to find a bored-looking clerk managing what appeared to be surprisingly professional cuts of meat in the front, and another behind him deboning a chicken that had likely been monstrously thin in life. The clerk perked up at their entrance, though he eyed them with slight suspiciously, no doubt wary of six people suddenly showing up in his doorway on what appeared to be a quiet day:

“Ah, customers,” he said, “what can I help you with today? Are you in need of fine meats?”

“Er, well—” started Fjord.

“You look like a man who enjoys his mutton. We have lamb chops as you like, hand cut to perfection!” Having ably caught Fjord off guard, he scanned the rest of the group and his eyes landed on Caleb. “And you! Such hair! A _fiery_ personality, no doubt. I believe you would adore our peppered salami!”

“Yeah,” said Beau, unamused, “we’re not looking for meat.”

“My darling,” said the clerk with an endearment that would only serve to intensify Beau’s ill-humored temperament. “You have come to a meat shop. Why would you come here if not for meat?”

“We were just over at The Old Man, looking for wine.”

The clerk blinked, and the chicken deboner stopped his work to glance back at the group. “Wine, you say?”

“A red from Kamordah, preferably. The proprietor over there said you might be able to spare a bottle.”

“I see.” The clerk nodded to his partner, and his accent, like the bartender before him, changed, “Allow me to find my boss and I will see what we can do.” He stepped away from the counter and disappeared into a back room, leaving only the chicken butcher to watch them, though he immediately went back to his work. 

And so, the Mighty Nein consigned themselves to waiting.

\--  
  


_II. An Eternal Duty_

The Lady awoke early.

She grimaced in pain as she sat up in the sarcophagus her compatriots had fashioned for her, placed in one of the deepest, darkest pits of the Manor. A place where no light would reach. A crypt. Eodwulf’s idea of a joke.

“ _A lovely bedchamber for the vampire queen_ ,” he had said the night she arrived in this dreadful little backwater, lightly jesting as always. It was a jest he would pay dearly for if the Lady had her way; she swore the next time she met that braying jackass she’d pull his spine right out of his arsehole.

Now, if only she could move her head without those needle-sharp stabs of pain. It seemed even undeath could not contend with a cricked neck.

With a grunt of displeasure, she stood, head kept still and facing forward. _Half-past-four_ , she thought, grasping the time instinctively, _another hour until dusk._ She would have to roam the dark haunts of the old Durenwald Manor for a while longer before she could make her nightly trip to visit her favorite physician.

Thankfully, she had just the perfect diversion planned.

But she was feeling a bit peckish.

As soon as she was ready, the Lady pushed open the heavy double doors that enclosed her macabre chambers and called, “Master Baran?” Out of the ink of the hallway, a sallow faced man in the formal garb of the Crownsguard materialized.

“My Lady?”

“I thirst, Master Baran,” she said, barely keeping the sneer at her own weakness out of her voice.

“I see,” Baran said, his thin lips pulling back into an oily rictus. “The Druid has captured several unlucky youths who have foolishly wandered into the forest. Whom would you prefer today? The dwarven logger? Or perhaps the elven one? Not too young, and I can smell virginity on her.”

Erathis help her, but she did hate this bastard. While the crypt had been Eodwulf’s joke, being dogged by this sadist was entirely Master Ikithon’s. He enjoyed his work too much, and she despised him for it. With a fleeting bit of humor, The Lady realized she wasn’t sure whether it was Baran or Ikithon she hated. Perhaps both.

Regarding her overeager servant with a cocked eyebrow and a glare that could freeze Avernus over, she said, “I do not care, Baran. I take no pleasure in this curse the way you seem to.”

Baran’s dirty-ice eyes gleamed as he said, “Immortality is a great gift, my Lady. If a few peasants must die to pay the blood price of your eternal youth, then so be it. Sheep are meant for the slaughter.”

“Master Baran, it would please me greatly if you would keep your mouth shut before I decide to pay that blood price with yours,” said The Lady sharply. “Bring me one of them, whichever you prefer, I don’t care. Just make sure they’re clean and free of disease.”

Early in her undeath, The Lady had made the mistake of feeding on a jaundiced old man. His blood had tasted like pickled rat droppings. She vowed to never have such an experience again.

“The virgin it is.” Baran’s grin widened to supernatural proportions and The Lady dearly wished to disembowel him on the spot. But if she did, Master Ikithon would be cross, and she had no patience to sit through the old man’s dyspeptic tantrums anymore, nor the heart to witness who his wroth might maim this time.

With some regret, she let Baran slip away, but not before calling, “I am going to the labyrinth to check on the Egg. Prepare the girl a room; she at least deserves some creature comforts if she is to become my donor.” Her chamberlain did not respond, no doubt his mind already racing with how to best to terrify the poor girl. “If you harm a hair on her head, Master Baran, I will have your guts for sausage casing.”

“As my Lady wishes.” Baran waved a hand lazily in The Lady’s direction, not even bothering to turn around.

She watched him slink away until he was swallowed by the darkness beyond even The Lady’s superior senses. With a sigh, she pushed a strand of white-blonde hair away from her eyes and started her trek down into the bowels of the old manor.

Durenwald Manor was a place of secrets, that much The Lady knew. Many rumors circulated around it; rumors not altogether different from the ones that surrounded the town proper. In ages past, this had been something of a successful port town, as the canals showed. How it had fallen so far and become this long-forgotten backwater was something of a mystery in and of itself.

The Lady slipped down old stone hallways that veered at odd angles, right, then left, then right again, and so on until she came to the dank, spiraling staircase. She had made this trek many times, down to the labyrinth, down to the Egg.

There were whispers, of course, about the worship of that near-forgotten Sea God, Old Procan, whispers that lended themselves to reality once she had seen the bloody-handed work of the Heretics. And then there was speculation of a darker sort: devil worship, unnatural experiments with the dead, and it was even suggested the Lord and Lady Briarwood hid here for a time before their escape to Tal’Dorei.

She stopped halfway down the staircase. Briarwood. There was a name The Lady would curse until her miserable unlife was ended for good. Scraps of their research, spirited away by Master Ikithon, had provided the Lady with her supernatural vitality and her taste for the sanguine. Baran said it was a great gift, but it was only a half-life at best, and a soul-sucking curse at the worst. And now she was stuffed away, she who had once saved lives regularly, hidden in some rotting corner of the Empire to avoid the watchful eyes of their religious zealots, afraid of even the faintest whiff of the undead.

 _All the better to guard the Egg, my dear,_ Master Ikithon reasoned back then. _An eternal duty for eternal life._

An eternal duty for eternal life. The Lady snorted in a rather unladylike manner as she began stalking down the stairs again, quicker now, eager to meet the relic of that old, wily devil. When the stairs leveled out, it opened into a cavernous tunnel, cut into the rock of the cliff over which Durenwald Manor stood, descending ever deeper into its bowels. She passed by a few tiny hollows filled with crystals, useful for some arcane components, but otherwise worthless to The Lady, who had no need for fine jewelry or quick gold. Beyond that was a little grotto with an ancient stream that ran through it to the waterfall that emptied out over The Druid’s domain in the forest below the manor.

Still the caves went lower, tunnels reinforced with archways of cyclopean stonework, and with each step the oppressive atmosphere grew. Though the Lady had no need to breathe any longer, she could tell the air grew thicker in these depths, its presence more like choking gas than life-giving oxygen. Alongside it, a supernatural darkness stretched out over a long and narrow bridge, blinding even those with infravision, and within that darkness were gnawing, biting things. Even as the Lady grew closer, she heard buzzing not unlike a coterie of gnats and other vicious insects.

Such was the danger of the darkness that the Lady’s first task upon awakening from her short-lived death was to help Eodwulf procure an ever-burning flame tainted with markings of the Abyss. This fire was used to light the braziers which hung precariously from a series of cairns that dotted the bridge all the way to the great double doors, beating back the darkness and the buzzing insects within them. A chasm opened below, still filled with insectoid whirring, but the way forward was safe.

The door was a thing of profane beauty. Two solid, towering chunks of volcanic, glossy rock, one ebony black and the other ivory white thrust upward nearly fifty feet, showcasing the sheer scope of this particular cavern. A golden filigree bloomed across the face of the white door and turned to ruby upon the black; it detailed the story of the Gods from the Creation to the sealing of the Divine Gate, recasting the fallen Celestial, Asmodeus, as the tragic hero at the center of it all.

 _Black and white, red and gold_ , thought the Lady. _Two-faced, just like its master._

The vampiress stood awhile and took in the sight: the fires within which was a hidden darkness and the dark god within whom was a hidden fire ( _Supposedly_ , she added mentally), before steeling herself and marching on. From within her robe she drew the keys, one an antique dagger with spindly white runes running across the length of its black blade, the other its inverse.

When she arrived at the other end of the bridge, the Lady ascended slate-grey steps, placed the keys within their respective holes, and waited for the whisper. First, the whirring stopped, then it came out of the dark:

“Bearer of the blades, what dost thou seek?”

“I seek the labyrinth,” she returned, and with a great shudder, the Two-Faced Door opened.

Beyond the monoliths of black and white was a great maze of walls, of sharp turns and even sharper traps to catch the unsuspecting tomb raider. The Lady, however, walked on without fear; she had a ferocious memory, the route to the center was child’s play to her after having trodden down it so many times. It took time, as it always did, but inevitably she came to the altar. It was two-faced, much like the door that guarded this inner sanctum, and atop it, nestled amongst gold-and-silver-decked chalices and censers, was the Egg.

Three curious things stood out about this relic: first, the egg was large, larger than dragon eggs even; second, the shell was a cardinal red that in the right light looked like drying blood; and third, one furious eye peered out from that very same crimson shell. The sclera, if it could be called that, was a putrefying combination of oranges and yellows, reminding the Lady unpleasantly of the jaundiced man she’d once fed off of. The iris was a deep, burning red, and the pupil was black and fathomless. Often when she came down here, the eye was closed in a facsimile of slumber, but occasionally it awoke, excited with some new malign prospect.

Today, the eye seemed almost giddy.

“Bearer of the Blades,” it greeted, its voice a haunting, slithering whisper.

Ever the picture of class, the Lady greeted back, “Good evening, Champion.”

The Egg made a noise like amusement but said nothing. The Lady folded her arms and considered the thing with a sharp eye. She had all she needed for now: no one had managed to steal the Egg, and no hell-knight awaited her in the labyrinth. The vampiress sighed. Sometimes even she couldn’t believe the story Ikithon concocted about this thing. An egg? Containing a Champion of Asmodeus? Ridiculous.

“Bring us the Minotaur,” the Egg commanded.

Bring us the Minotaur. Bring us the Minotaur. It was practically all the Egg ever said, and she was no closer to understanding the cryptic phrase now than when she’d first heard it. She knew through firsthand experience that the Egg did not care for literal minotaurs, so the phrase clearly symbolized something. The problem was, she had no idea _what_ it symbolized.

“Bring us the Minotaur,” the Egg commanded once more, its red iris pulsing menacingly.

The Lady rolled her eyes, the Egg could often be cantankerous when awake. “Yes, yes, I will be sure to continue looking for your—”

“Our Lord's Champion nears,” the Eye of the Egg pushed up, as if looking vainly for something on the ceiling of the cavern, or something above it. “Bring us the Minotaur.”

That was new. So far the sum total of what the Egg ever said consisted of ‘Bearer of the Blades’ and ‘Bring us the Minotaur.’ Something uncoiled in the Lady’s stomach, a sudden wakefulness like she hadn’t felt in months. Her teeth set on edge, and she licked her long canines in anticipation.

“Asmodeus’s Champion nears? Will he crack out of that shell?” It had certainly taken long enough, if so.

The eye returned to her, and rather comically, it looked annoyed. “The Champion comes from above, not within.”

“Meaning that watching over you for as long as I have has been entirely pointless.” The Lady shook her head. “Typical.”

“You cannot stop us.”

“You overestimate this Champion of yours.”

“We do no such thing. We state only truths.”

“It seems rather more like prophesying to me.”

The Egg made that amused noise once more. “Prophetic they may seem, but they are only the truth. We know all truths. Including yours.”

“Very well,” said the Lady, “tell me your _truths_.”

“You cannot stop the Champion,” it repeated.

“Yes, you’ve already said that,” she interrupted, but the Egg barreled on:

“You will try, Astrid," it prophesied. "And you will die.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's that for now. A little less got done and it came out a little later than I anticipated, but we've introduced a few of players on the stage and now I hopefully can get more into the meat of the story now that most of the exposition is done. Let me know what you guys think.
> 
> PJF


End file.
